Preamble

The House met at Eleven o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — SCOTLAND

Devolution

Mr. Budgen: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on the progress towards a Scottish Assembly.

Mr. Storehouse: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker—

Mr. Speaker: Order. Would the right hon. Member be kind enough to raise his point of order at the end of Questions so as to save Question time?

Mr. Storehouse: Yes, Mr. Speaker.

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Bruce Millan): The Government's plans and programme were set out in paragraph 6 of last November's White Paper. A large number of organisations and individuals have submitted comments on the proposals. Others have still to comment. We are considering these comments carefully.

Mr. Budgen: I offer the Secretary of State my personal congratulations upon his appointment. However, does he realise that it would be completely wrong to make any provision for a Scottish Assembly unless and until Parliament has decided that there should be such an Assembly?

Mr. Millan: Obviously the Assembly will not come into operation unless Parliament so decides. I believe that Parliament will so decide. We have already had a long debate about this and no doubt we shall have other debates.
I thank the hon. Gentleman very much for his kind remarks.

Mr. Donald Stewart: l should like to extend to the right hon. Gentleman congratulations from the SNP Bench, and our best wishes to him in his new task.
May I ask the right hon. Gentleman to reject the kind of advice that he has just been given? Does he realise that there is already strong feeling in Scotland about the Government's slippage in their timetable for an Assembly Bill and that any further delay will be greatly resented and will see the Government's boots off when the time comes?

Mr. Millan: l thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind opening remarks. There has been and will be no delay on the devolution commitment. I have already made clear that the Bill will be introduced at the start of the next Session and it will go through the House during the Session.

Mr. William Hamilton: Will my right hon. Friend have another look at the idea of a referendum among the Scottish people to ascertain whether they want complete separation, as advocated by the SNP, or a measure of devolution, as advocated by the Government?

Mr. Millan: I do not think that we need a referendum on separation, as it is already clear that the overwhelming majority of the people of Scotland do not want it.

Mr. Buchanan-Smith: I should like to continue the happy note on which Question Time today has been started by offering my felicitations and those of my right hon. and hon. Friends to the right hon. Gentleman in his new tasks. As long as he continues them in the interests of Scotland, we shall certainly do what we can to support him.
Concerning the Assembly legislation, will there be one Bill or two Bills?

Mr. Millan: I thank the hon. Gentleman very sincerely for his kind words.
I think that the hon. Gentleman and the House know that whether there should be one Bill or two Bills is still under consideration.

Mr. William Hamilton: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will pay an official visit to Rosyth Dockyard to discuss with the workers there the


implications of separatism for their job prospects.

The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Harry Ewing): As the Government have no plans to separate Scotland from the rest of the United Kingdom and are confident this will not happen, my right hon. Friend would be wasting the workers' time to discuss this particular issue with them.

Mr. Hamilton: Is my hon. Friend aware that it is the official policy of the SNP to have a separate Scottish navy? Does he think that three men in a boat could keep Rosyth Dockyard going? Will he read very carefully the official pronouncement from the SNP in the recent defence debate? It is an extremely important statement.

Mr. Ewing: As I understand the SNP. far from being three men in a boat, it consists of nine men and two women in a boat. On policy they are certainly all at sea. I agree that this is a very serious issue indeed for the workers at Rosyth Dockyard. From my knowledge of these workers—some of my family are at Rosyth Dockyard—I can say that they are very much aware that if the SNP ever got its way—and that certainly will not happen—they would all be out of a job. That mesage is coming home more and more.

Mr. MacCormick: Does not the hon. Gentleman appreciate that the Question is a disreputable subterfuge designed to mislead the people of Rosyth into believing that what the hon. Gentleman has said would happen? Does he not agree that the strategic situation is almost certain to force the Labour Government to close Rosyth Dockyard?

Mr. Ewing: The hon. Gentleman should appreciate that, because of the statement in the defence debate, he and many of his colleagues at the next election will be sunk without trace.

Mr. Sillars: Is the Minister aware that this whole exchange is based on the erroneous assumption that an SNP Government will be Socialist, and therefore rational in its approach to defence? Would he care to re-assess his answers on the much more accurate supposition that an SNP Government dominated by

the philosophy of the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire, East (Mr. Henderson) might be a good bit to the Right even of the Conservative Party, leading to a bigger army, navy and airforce?

Mr. Ewing: I am glad that my hon. Friend appreciates that the SNP is on the extreme Right of Right-wing politics in this country. I agree that there is no possibility of the SNP ever controlling the country. SNP Members should look at their voting record. They have voted more often with the Conservatives than have the Ulster Unionists. I agree with what my hon. Friend said, that on defence strategy there is no doubt what would happen if the SNP were ever to control Scotland. SNP Members quote Norway. Time and again we have the example of Norway thrown at us. There is no doubt that national service would be a feature of the SNP defence policy in Scotland.

Mr. Younger: Is the Minister aware that the suggestion of a visit to Rosyth is quite inadequate for the purpose which the hon. Gentleman has in mind? Is he not aware that he would have to visit Kinloss, Leuchars, Lossiemouth, Faslane and Kirkcudbright to tell the employees there that they would be out of a job?

Mr. Ewing: The hon. Gentleman should appreciate that from today my right hon. Friend has 10 days at his disposal. I do not know what he wants to do in the next 10 days. It may be that a tour of the defence establishments in Scotland to convey that information is in his mind.

Mr. Cryer: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what representations he has received for the separation of Scotland.

Mr. Harry Ewing: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply which I have just given to my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton).

Mr. Cryer: Does my hon. Friend agree that the SNP constantly states that it will separate companies, nationalised industries and the Armed Forces? At the same time, the SNP qualifies those statements with talk about independence. Does my hon. Friend agree that perhaps the message is getting through to the Scottish


people that separation is really the SNP's policy and that that realisation is reflected in the opinion polls showing Labour in the lead? Does my hon. Friend also agree that the problems of capitalism—which has produced a high level of unemployment—will never be solved by splitting the working class?

Mr. Ewing: We are all aware that the problems of the workers on Merseyside and in Birmingham, Glasgow and Dundee are exactly the same and that a concerted effort is required by all on a United Kingdom basis to solve the workers' problems. A divided working class has always been a defeated working class. If the SNP succeeds in dividing the working class, it will be acting in the interests of the capitalist class which finances its policies. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Taylor) should contain himself. He is always on about crime, and he is in danger of being charged with a breach of the peace if he does not behave himself. I agree with my hon. Friend that what he said is reflected in the improved position revealed in the System Three opinion poll in the Glasgow Herald on Monday morning.

Mr. Sproat: Will the hon. Gentleman join me in welcoming the increasing interest of both sides of the House in devolution and note that there is hostility to the idea not only from Scottish Members but from English Members and Scotsmen sitting for English constituencies? If the Government insist on trying to push through the House legislation that puts at risk the unity of the United Kingdom, they will meet implacable hostility. What they are now witnessing is the beginning of the British backlash to plans that would lead to separation.

Mr. Ewing: That is the view that the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Sproat) has held consistently, and I pay him credit for that. The other side of the story is that there is a great deal of support from English Members representing English constituencies for the views held by the Government and for the legislation which we shall put through the House. The right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath) and the former Prime Minister are good examples of that support.

Mr. Gordon Wilson: The hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer) appears to be unaware that the SNP won yet another election last night. Given that a recent parliamentary answer shows that only 4·1 per cent. of parliamentary time on the Floor of the House is devoted to Scottish matters, does not the Minister accept that the invasion by English Members of Scottish business is intolerable?

Mr. Ewing: The SNP should be eternally grateful for the 4·1 per cent. of the time on the Floor of the House which is devoted to Scottish matters, because, judging by the speeches which members of the SNP make in that time, they are fortunate that they do not have to speak for any longer. The people of Scotland are becoming more aware of the separatist views of the SNP. That is why the percentage of people in Scotland who want separation has dropped from 26 to 15. As for what the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. Wilson) described as the invasion by English Members of Scottish Question Time, the English Members' intrusion, especially from the Government Benches, has considerably increased the standard.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Hon. Members more and more are debating matters instead of seeking knowledge.

Mr. Buchan: Does my hon. Friend recall the magnificent display of solidarity between the workers of Scotland and the workers of England in the fight over Chrysler? Does he also recall that the main contribution of the SNP on that issue was, first, to try to split the workers of both countries by saying that Coventry should go to the wall, and, secondly, a week later, in an agricultural debate, to say that all the money should be used to plant trees instead of helping both sets of workers?

Mr. Ewing: In addition to what happened during the debates on Chrysler, it is worth recording that the SNP still hopes—and I understand that the hon. Member for Banff (Mr. Watt) is on record as saying this—that Chrysler, Linwood will fail, because plainly, for the SNP to succeed, the Scottish economy and industry in Scotland must collapse. Therefore, I understand that


the SNP still lives in hope that Chrysler will fail.

Glenluce

Mr. Thompson: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will pay an official visit to Glenluce.

Mr. Millan: I have at present no plans to do so.

Mr. Thompson: I offer my congratulations to the right hon. Gentleman.
Under the old dispensation the Gretna-Dumfries section of the A75 received a ministerial visit. May we in Galloway hope that under the new dispensation we shall achieve parity of ministerial esteem with our good neighbours in Dumfries? Specifically, will the right hon. Gentleman send someone to Glenluce to look at the extreme difficulty of reconciling the needs of shopkeepers, pedestrians and juggernauts in that small village?

Mr. Millan: I hope that under this Administration all parts of Scotland will have equal cause to feel grateful for the Government's treatment of them. I think that the hon. Gentleman knows that the subject of this particular road was raised in an Adjournment debate to which I replied some time ago. The regional council is looking at the question of the new line for the trunk road at present. Until it has completed its study, I do not think that we can make further progress.

Mr. Monro: If the Minister goes to Wigtownshire, will he make a point of visiting the RAF Station at West Freugh and pointing out to the RAF and civilian personnel there that were there to be separation and a Scottish Government, as advocated by the SNP, they would all be out of a job?

Mr. Millan: Yes, I shall make that visit and make that point. That is only one of numerous examples of unemployment that an SNP Government—an unlikely event—would cause for Scotland.

Public Inquiries

4. Mr. Gray: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will review the present system of public inquiries in Scotland.

Mr. Millan: Following an extensive review of inquiry procedures, a memorandum

of guidance was issued in February last year. I am sending the hon. Gentleman a copy. I am considering whether further improvements are practicable.

Mr. Gray: I add my best wishes to those that have been extended to the right hon. Gentleman. Will he make a real name for himself at the start by agreeing with me that the whole system of public inquiry in Scotland has lost the confidence of the public? Because of the actions of successive Secretaries of State in overruling reporters' reports, is there not a need for a completely new system in which awards of costs can be made more easily available to those who lodge objections?

Mr. Millan: I think public opinion depends upon what the eventual result of an inquiry is. If a member of the public thinks the result is favourable, he thinks that the system is also favourable. If the result is unfavourable, he does not care for it.
We have made a lot of improvements to cut down the time spent on inquiries without reducing the rights of anyone. But at the end of the day the Secretary of State has to make the final decision, and in the case of the important inquiries in his own constituency with regard to the Nigg refinery the hon. Gentleman was very happy when my predecessor overturned the reporter's recommendation.

Mr. Canavan: Will my right hon. Friend give serious consideration to the request he has received to hold a public inquiry into the administration of the cheap home loans scheme for the officials of the Central Regional Council, bearing in mind the public anxiety about this matter and the admission of what I claimed all along, that a local inquiry would be possible under the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973?

Mr. Millan: Whether a local inquiry is possible is a different question from whether it is necessary or desirable. I know my hon. Friend's strong feelings about this, but I do not think that there is a case for an inquiry into facts which are already established and well known.

Mr. Fairbairn: May I add my good wishes to the Secretary of State upon his appointment?
May I ask him to snuff out a real iniquity in public inquiries in Scotland in that a local or public authority can spend as much of the ratepayers' money as it wants without regard to whether it wins or loses, and the objector, win or lose, has to fork out from his own pocket? This is an iniquity and I ask the right hon. Gentleman to look into it.

Mr. Millan: I know that some of these inquiries are very expensive in lawyers' fees and that sort of thing. One reason why we are trying to get a simpler system is to cut out some of the expense. It is very difficult indeed to accept the principle of allowing costs because, without saying anything detrimental about the merits of cases which objectors put forward, it would add tremendously to the burden at inquiries and would make them much more lengthy and time consuming than they now are.

Mr. Russell Johnston: May I offer my commiserations to the Secretary of State?
Will the right hon. Gentleman at least say that he has not closed his mind absolutely to allowing costs? I know that it is very difficult indeed and that it would possibly proliferate objections if costs were allowed. Nevertheless, this is a genuine problem when people with little finance are faced by the State or possibly local authorities and, while being uncertain whether they will win or lose, will still be forced to pay.

Mr. Millan: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman was the first to strike the right note in his opening remarks.
I agree that this is a serious problem because objectors often feel at a considerable disadvantage compared with public bodies. We have tried to make the procedures at public inquiries less formal. If the hon. Gentleman looks into public inquiries, he will find that the reporters do everything possible to make the individual objector feel able to present his case adequately, even if he is not legally represented. I consider that this is an important step ferward.

Miss Harvie Anderson: In wishing the right hon. Gentleman well in his new appointment, may I ask him to consider putting a limit on costs for both the public authority concerned and for the objector if he is a private individual? Is it

not practicable to introduce some limit on both sides?

Mr. Millan: The trouble is that inquiries vary so much in their importance and complexity. What might be a suitable rule for one kind of inquiry might not be suitable for another.
I make the general point that I am anxious that, in the public interest as well as in the interests of individual parties, we should get inquiry procedures which are as inexpensive as possible.

Public Transport

Mr. Canavan: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he will take steps to improve public transport in Scotland.

Mr. Millan: Possible developments in public transport are dealt with in the consultation document "Transport Policy", the publication of which was announced yesterday by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment. A statement will be made when consultations have taken place.

Mr. Canavan: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the opposition in Scotland from trade unions and public transport users to the proposal in the transport policy document to phase out transport subsidies, thereby leading to a possible trebling of fares by 1981? Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind the harmful effect this would have, particularly on pensioners, other low-income groups and those who live in rural and socially-deprived areas of Scotland?

Mr. Millan: My hon. Friend cannot have read the document carefully if he believes that it contains proposals for phasing out transport subsidies. He is concerned about bus fares and bus services in his own constituency, and one of the Government's main purposes in the document is to look after the interests of people without individual car transport. We are maintaining the subsidies for bus services in Scotland, and last year the Government provided more for bus subsidies in the rate support grant than was actually spent by local authorities.

Mr. Teddy Taylor: Is not the Minister aware that there was a near-unanimous voice of protest in Scotland yesterday


after the publication of the consultative document? Did he agree to the proposals and the alternatives set out in the document? What plans has he to meet transport operators and trade unions to discuss its implications?

Mr. Millan: I shall consider the question of meetings. Those who are in favour of the development of the railways against the road system have one point of view, but there are others who put the contrary view. Before the document was published, many wild allegations appeared in the newspapers saying that it would advocate a slashing of the railway services in Scotland. We said that that was not intended, and it is not included in the document. I do not attach overwhelming importance to initial reactions. As people read the document in detail, they will understand the complexities of the problem and the general purposes which the Government have in mind, which are directed towards improving the public transport system in Scotland, on which a large number of our people depend.

Mr. Henderson: Is the Secretary of State in favour of any extension of the rail network in Scotland? Does he see a need to improve communications? Will he consider carefully the proposals put forward by ASLEF for a commuter service in the Aberdeen area?

Mr. Millan: I have seen various proposals. We have recently announced an improvement to the Perth-Inverness railway line because we felt it was justified by additional traffic. Where similar cases can be presented elsewhere, we shall certainly consider them.

Mr. Buchanan: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, because of its geography, Scotland has most to gain from adherence to the policies laid down in successive Labour manifestos for the co-ordination and integration of transport?

Mr. Millan: I agree with my hon. Friend. He will see interesting proposals towards that end in the document we have just published.

Mr. Monro: Does the Secretary of State appreciate that, arising from the statement made yesterday by his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, there could be a conflict between the railway lines that the Government

consider could be closed and those that British Rail wants to close? That statement has done nothing to allay the fears of railway men in Scotland. Will the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that there will be no railway cuts north of the border?

Mr. Millan: Whatever the fears at the moment, they are nothing like the fears which arose under the previous Conservative Government about the Beeching cuts.

Economic Affairs

Mr. Gordon Wilson: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what is the most recent assessment by his Department of current economic trends within Scotland; and when it will be published.

Mr. Millan: The edition of the "Scottish Economic Bulletin" recently published by my Department contains an assessment of current trends.

Mr. Wilson: Does the Secretary of State realise that that answer will cause tremendous disappointment in Scotland in view of the CBI report published at the end of March on short-term trends? Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that there is need for positive freedom of economic expansion in Scotland and that it is necessary for the Government to do something towards that end rather than floating out on each economic tide like a jellyfish?

Mr. Millan: I know that any factual answer disappoints the SNP, because factual accuracy is the last thing in which the SNP is interested. I was interested to see Lord Clydesmuir's statement yesterday expressing considerable optimism about the long-term future of the Scottish economy. There are certain short-term actions that have to be taken and certain negative aspects that have to be avoided, such as SNP policy on oil development, which would immediately lead to the loss of about 25,000 jobs.

Mr. Sillars: Does the Secretary of State think that this time next year there will be fewer than 100,000 unemployed in Scotland?

Mr. Millan: I never make forecasts of that kind. My hon. Friend knows that it is the absolute purpose of the Government through their Budget proposals and


in other ways to reduce unemployment as rapidly as possible.

Mr. Younger: How long does the Secretary of State think that it will take him to get Scotland's output and employment up to the highest levels achieved during the previous Conservative Administration?

Mr. Millan: I do not accept that as an accurate statement of the situation. Output is expanding very satisfactorily at the moment. From the figures published yesterday, the hon. Gentleman will know that the average level of industrial wages in Scotland is now higher than the average in England.

Mr. Buchanan-Smith: Given that unemployment in Scotland is at an unprecedentedly high level, will the right hon. Gentleman say precisely on what his optimistic statements of last week are based?

Mr. Millan: The progress of the Scottish economy over the last year compared with that in the rest of the United Kingdom shows that there are considerable grounds for optimism. I have always made clear—and make clear now—that the level of unemployment in Scotland is unacceptable and that we must get it down as quickly as possible.

Mr. Henderson: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a further statement on the prospects of the Scottish economy during 1976.

Mr. Millan: The outlook for the Scottish economy is strongly influenced by the prospects for the United Kingdom and world economies, and evidence that recovery has begun both at home and abroad is now accumulating. In addition, the performance of the Scottish economy relative to the United Kingdom during the past year has been encouraging.

Mr. Henderson: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for repeating so well the words of his predecessor when he answered Questions of this kind. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is cosiderable disquiet about work being taken out of Scotland? In particular, is he aware that the Scottish Transport Group has placed an order for re-engineering the "Glen Sannox" in Norway while a company

capable of producing the engine, British Polar Engines Limited, in Glasgow, has declared several redundancies? Has the right hon. Gentleman power to intervene?

Mr. Millan: No. The question which the hon. Gentleman has in mind is strictly within the responsibility of the Scottish Transport Group, and there was no question of its asking for my approval for the order. However, I have already made clear to all nationalised industries that I expect them to give the maximum amount of orders to this country, and particularly to Scotland. I very much regret any order going abroad. I am aware of the problems at British Polar Engines Limited and I have discussed them with both management and men.

Paper-Making Industry

Mr. Fairgrieve: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what action he intends to take to alleviate the present problems facing the paper-making industry in West Aberdeenshire.

Mr. Millan: The paper-making industry in Scotland, together with other manufacturing industries, is eligible for the full range of assistance under the Government's regional policies.

Mr. Fairgrieve: Does the Minister appreciate that the paper mills in my constituency and in other parts of the United Kingdom would be greatly helped if the Government ceased granting Scandinavian countries import facilities to which they would be entitled only if they were members of the Common Market, which patently they are not?

Mr. Millan: Some of these questions are for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade. However, on the question of duty-free quotas, for example, there was a very small increase in the current year and that was basically in grades of paper which we are not producing. The hon. Gentleman knows that I am well aware of the problems in his constituency and that if there is anything I can do to help I am anxious to do it.

Mr. Buchanan: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the basic raw material in paper-making has been put at considerable risk by the catastrophic fall this year in plantings? Will he use his considerable


influence to decrease the disincentive to planting in the present fiscal system?

Mr. Millan: I do not accept what my hon. Friend has said, but a vigorous forestry policy in this country, with the Forestry Commission taking the lead, is very much part of Government policy.

Mr. Watt: Does the Secretary of State recognise that there will soon be a need for a pulp mill in North-East Scotland? Will his Department do a feasibility study on it?

Mr. Millan: It is suggested that it might pulp the SNP speeches, but we are not interested in low-quality output.

Fishing Industry

Mr. Sproat: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on the present state of the fishing industry.

The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Hugh D. Brown): This question was fully debated on 5th April, and I have nothing to add to what my hon. Friend and I said in opening and replying to the debate.

Mr. Sproat: It was not fully debated; it was very badly debated. As the March catch rate for the trawling fleet has declined by 10 per cent. compared with the February rate, are the Government still as optimistic about the financial viability of the Scottish fleet as they were? Will the hon. Gentleman say "Yes" or "No" to the question whether we are allowed under the EEC regulations to continue the fishing subsidy? If we are not, why are the French continuing to subsidise fishing fuel oil by 14 million francs this year?

Mr. Brown: The hon. Gentleman has asked about three questions. In the first 10 weeks of this year—that is, up to the middle of March—earnings for white fish trawlers over 80 feet were 50 per cent. higher than they were in the same period last year. The hon. Gentleman now recognises that we were perhaps nearer the mark than the exaggerated claims that he was making some weeks ago.
As the hon. Gentleman knows, any fuel or operating subsidy requires the approval of the EEC. To our knowledge, the French are not giving a comparable subsidy.

Mr. Corrie: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that part of the problem of the fishing industry is that a large amount of fish is being dumped in this country by such countries as Poland, which is bringing in fish at one-third the market price? Is there anything that the Government can do about it?

Mr. Brown: I am not aware of dumping by Polish vessels. Apparently that was a problem last year, but my information is that it is not a problem now. The main criticism was against Norwegian imports, and steps have been taken for Norwegian import prices to be increased.

Mr. Buchanan-Smith: Will the Secretary of State be continuing the role in the Common Market negotiations on the CFP that his predecessor played in recent weeks?

Mr. Brown: Yes. I am happy to be able to assure the hon. Gentleman—and to recognise the service given, particularly in recent months, by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross). I have already had discussions with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, and that interest will continue. I am not sure whether mine will.

Mr. Watt: Does the hon. Gentleman realise that the herring quotas allocated to the British fleet in the north-east Atlantic are totally inadequate? Will he seek a better deal for the British fisherman?

Mr. Brown: As the hon. Member knows, the North-East Atlantic Fisheries Commission is meeting next week to discuss this matter. There is a particular Scottish interest in herring. However, there must be greater recognition by all countries of the need for sound conservation measures. We are taking the initiative in that respect.

Mountain and Hill Farming (EEC Directive)

Mr. Russell Johnston: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he will implement the provision of the EEC Directive on Mountain and Hill Farming, which allows for investment grants for non-agricultural activities such as tourism and craft industries in hill areas.

Mr. Hugh D. Brown: I have no immediate plans to implement Article 10.2 of the Less Favoured Areas Directive, but the possibility is being kept under review.

Mr. Johnston: That was a very unsatisfactory answer. Is not the reason why the hon. Gentleman is not implementing the article basically bureaucratic, because it is felt that the Department of Agriculture should administer it and it has not the officials to deal with the tourist and craft industries? Is it not foolish to turn down the possibility of financial help when the financial reins on the Highlands and Islands Development Board and the Scottish Tourist Board inevitably will be tightened?

Mr. Brown: In view of the crucial state of the Government, and of my crucial state, it is not encouraging to hear hon. Members say that a reply is unsatisfactory. The hon. Gentleman is most unfair; it is not like him.
A study has been commissioned by the Scottish Tourist Board and the HIDB through Edinburgh University, and the Department is associated with it. We think that perhaps the best way of proceeding is through these organisations, but if there is any need to make changes we shall view them sympathetically.

Mr. MacCormick: Is the Minister aware of the widespread dismay in the Highlands on the part of hill farmers about the delays in the payment of the present allowances which should be available?

Mr. Brown: I think that, as usual, the hon. Member is confused. I am not sure to which allowances he is referring, but, if he is talking about the payments which are due, a reply was given to his hon. Friend the Member for Banff (Mr. Watt) on that point. We are certainly speeding up the payments now due to the hill farmers.

Textile Industry

13. Mr. Reid: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he will make a statement on the rundown of the textile industry in Clackmannanshire.

Mr. Millan: I am very concerned about recent closures of textile factories in Clackmannanshire and will keep in touch with the situation.

Mr. Reid: Does the new Secretary of State for Scotland remember that, when Donbros of Alloa closed, specific guarantees were given in writing by Coats Paton that a new synthetic yarn plant would open at Lornshill, and that the company has now gone back on its word and opened the plant in England? What does the Secretary of State feel about them morality of such a sell-out, and what will he do about it?

Mr. Millan: The hon. Gentleman will know that that particular move involved moving work from England to Scotland—a rather different thing from what he is normally complaining about. As it happens, there was a certain amount of English opposition to that move, but the situation has now changed. Coats Paton, which is a Scottish company, has given an undertaking that some other suitable work will be moved to Alloa, and I am anxious to see that that undertaking is discharged. The initial undertaking, as the hon. Gentleman will know, came after I met the management of the company, and I very much want to see the factory at Lornshill being used.

Denominational Schools

14. Mr. Rifkind: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he will make a statement on the Government's policy towards denominational schools in Scotland.

The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Frank McEIhone): I agree with the view which has been held by successive Governments that no action should be taken to change the basic statutory provisions relating to denominational education unless there is a wide measure of agreement between the religious and educational bodies concerned, and the general public, that changes are desirable. There would appear to be no such general agreement at present.

Mr. Rifkind: Is the Minister aware that substantial alarm has been caused by the recent demands of the Scottish Labour Party conference at Troon that the Government should end the system of denominational schools? Although the House will be pleased to have heard the words of the Minister, will he give a categorical assurance that the Government will not contemplate ending denominational schools against the wishes of the parents


involved? Will he undertake that the Government will not make any change in that policy unless there is a demand for it from the parents concerned, and not simply on the basis of general agreement?

Mr. McElhone: That is a typical misunderstanding of the Scottish Council of the Labour Party conference at Troon. I am only sorry that the hon. Gentleman was not present during the relevant discussions. But this is a very important issue and I make it clear that there is no change at all planned by this Government to the 1918 Act. There will be no change without the consent of the Roman Catholic population in Scotland. I want to make that perfectly clear.

Mr. Buchan: Will my hon. Friend please not allow the spokesman of the Tory Front Bench to get away with an absolute untruth? This was not the decision that was reached at the Scottish Labour Party conference. On the contrary, the Scottish Labour Party conference made it perfectly clear—as my hon. Friend did in his closing remarks—that there should be encouragement towards co-operation and integration, that there was no question of a move in this direction by Government diktat, and that it would depend on a change of climate towards this issue in Scotland. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdrawn his total misinterpretation of what happened at the conference.

Mr. McElhone: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that statement. It is a correct interpretation of what happened at the conference at Troon.

Mr. Monro: Has the Minister read the recent McKechin Report, which presents certain strictures on Roman Catholic schools in Strathclyde? Does the Minister agree with it? What steps is he taking to improve the number of teachers in Catholic schools in the West of Scotland?

Mr. McElhone: I do not necessarily agree with that Report. Although I have taken note of the Press comments, the Report has not been submitted to me for approval or consideration. The hon. Gentle man will not be unaware that Strathclyde education authority has budgeted, with the rate support grant that we have allocated to it, for 800 extra teachers. With the number of Roman Catholic secondary teachers coming out of college

this year, I am confident—as I understand the Director of Education for Strathclyde is confident—that we shall see an end to part-time education in the West of Scotland for the first time for 25 or 30 years.

Hospital Facilities (Argyll)

Mr. MacCormick: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what representations he has received concerning the future provision of hospital facilities in Argyll.

Mr. McElhone: Two.

Mr. MacCormick: I thank the Minister for his reply. Does he appreciate the great depth of feeling on this subject, not only in Argyll but all over rural Scotland? Does he further appreciate that he could greatly alleviate the feelings of people in the rural areas by assuring them that there will be no undue centralisation of hospital facilities?

Mr. McElhone: I am in touch with the position in Argyll and Clyde. It is in the first place for the board to submit recommendations in the light of the local com-sultations which are taking place. Any proposals by the board for a change in hospital services must have the approval of my right hon. Friend.

Mr. Welsh: Will the Minister say whether his policy is a centralist or decentralist one? Will he do his utmost where possible to bring hospital services to the people rather than vice versa? Will he bear in mind especially the situation at Arbroath Infirmary?

Mr. McElhone: Hospital services are not a matter of dogma, and the hon. Gentleman is pre-empting his later Question.

Teachers

Mrs. Bain: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what consultation he has had with the staff of teacher-training colleges following his announced cutback in recruitment of student teachers.

Mr. McElhone: I sent copies of my proposals to the two associations representing the academic staff of the colleges and invited their comments. Representatives of the Association of Lecturers in Colleges of Education in Scotland met officials of my Department on 29th March and I


had a further meeting with them on 8th April.

Mrs. Bain: When the Minister is reconsidering the decision about recruitment to training colleges, will he bear in mind the widespread antagonism in Scotland towards the secondary school staffing circular of 1973, commonly known as the "red book", which is regarded by teachers as totally inadequate for assessing the needs in schools? As reduced class size is educationally desirable, will he say what consideration was given to class size in his decision on the new contract offered to Scottish teachers?

Mr. McElhone: The teachers' contract is one for which many English teachers would give their right arm. Account was taken of the hon. Lady's point when the consultations on the contract took place in June 1975 between the Scottish Education Department and the local authorities. We now have the best pupil-teacher ratio that we have ever had in Scotland. In spite of difficulties, we are allocating rate support grant for 800 extra teachers in Strathclyde. We also have taken into account the substantial drop in the birth rate. Between 1975–76 and 1980–81 there will be 100,000 fewer pupils in our Scottish primary schools. Regard must be paid to this fact. I am not at this moment influencing this trend—I do not know whether anyone else is—but it is a factor which has to be taken into account.

Mr. Canavan: Instead of using the projected population decrease, or cut in the birth rate, as an excuse to cut teacher recruitment, would it not be better to maintain recruitment levels and thereby reduce class size, especially for children receiving remedial education, and also in subjects where there is still a shortage of teachers?

Mr. McElhone: I know my hon. Friend's concern, as a former teacher, about this matter. As I have already pointed out to the House, we now have the best pupil-teacher ratio we have ever had in Scotland. At 15:1 it is much better than England and Wales, with 17:1 on average. I am fully aware that, given a perfect world with no financial constraints, we should wish to improve our teaching standards and pupil-teacher ratios even more. We are aiming at

this, but let us be fair. Even with the difficulties under which we are working, we hope to see the end of part-time education, and I repeat that we have the best pupil-teacher ratio that we have ever had in Scotland.

Oral Answers to Questions — CHILDREN'S PANELS

Mr. Teddy Taylor: asked the Lord Advocate if he will pay an official visit to a children's panel hearing.

The Lord Advocate (Mr. Ronald King Murray): No, Sir. I have no ministerial responsibility for children's hearings. I would, however, welcome an opportunity to make an unofficial visit.

Mr. Taylor: May I encourage the Lord Advocate to pay such a visit, in the course of which he might gain some knowledge of the growing concern amongst panel members about the lack of facilities available to them and about the growing lack of confidence of the public about the effect of panels? Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman willing to organise a conference of those involved in panels to see whether improvements can be made?

The Lord Advocate: It would not be my ministerial function to organise such a conference, although a conference of this kind might in due course have certain advantages.
I should be happy to pay an early visit to a children's hearing. I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman's comment about the public view. Although there is some disquiet, there is a great deal of understanding that this is an arrangement which must be given a chance to prove itself, and that must be over a period of years.

Mr. Gordon Wilson: Although I accept that the Lord Advocate does not have a narrow departmental control over the children's panel system, I think that he would discover that procedures at the panel are very useful but that panel members lack the necessary support facilities and intermediate powers for which many of them have pressed as being necessary. Will he undertake through his Department to engage with his fraternal Department in the Scottish Office in discussions about the need for a thorough


review of the Social Work (Scotland) Act as it affects the panel system?

The Lord Advocate: I am happy to tell the hon. Gentleman that these matters are under consideration.

Oral Answers to Questions — LOCAL GOVERNMENT (SCOTLAND) ACT 1973

Mr. Canavan: asked the Lord Advocate whether any prosecutions have taken place in connection with the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973.

The Lord Advocate: No, Sir.

Mr. Canavan: In view of the absence of approval by the Secretary of State for local authority cheap home loan schemes for officials, is it not clear that there may have been a breach of the law by certain people who have gained financially from breaking the law? Even if we accept the claim that they acted in good faith, since when was that an excuse for breaking the law?

The Lord Advocate: My hon. Friend has framed his supplementary question rather cryptically. But any matter of an alleged breach would be reported to me as public prosecutor, and the case would be considered. If my hon. Friend has any information to lay before me in this connection, I hope that he will do so.

Mr. Younger: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman consider carefully any proposals for prosecutions in Dundee, where there is grave public disquiet about the many allegations in the Press in recent months of impropriety?

The Lord Advocate: The hon. Gentleman is no doubt aware that a complaint has been served in Dundee arising out of recent allegations. As that matter is sub judice, I can make no further comment.

Oral Answers to Questions — INDICTMENT IN SOLEMN PROCEDURE

Mr. Russell Johnston: asked the Lord Advocate whether he is satisfied with the system employed in the Crown Office for the assessment of the weight of evidence before the service of an indictment in solemn procedure.

The Lord Advocate: Yes, Sir.

Mr. Johnston: Has the Lord Advocate had an opportunity to study the extraordinary case of John Joseph Boyle, a Scots Guardsman who was sentenced to nine years and subsequently had his sentence quashed? Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman think that the procedures leading to that case justify any review? Does he not agree that the law exists also to protect the individual against himself as well as to protect the public at large?

The Lord Advocate: This case does not call for a review of the arrangements. Perhaps it would be helpful to the hon. Gentleman if I dealt briefly with the specific difficulty in this case.
As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, normally serious cases dealt with by indictment are prepared by way of precognition by the procurator fiscal. However, if the person who is accused of serious crime wishes the matter to be disposed of rapidly, it has been open to him for many years to proceed by what used to be called a Section 31 letter and is now called a Section 102 letter, and this enables the matter to be disposed of with considerable speed. In cases of that kind, the case against the accused is not fully precognised because there is not time for that. Indeed, that is the virtue of the procedure. One can go straight to a plea and the case can be disposed of by a plea of guilty, following which sentence will be imposed.
However, in cases of this kind where there is a Section 102 letter, the Crown Office has to proceed on a statement of the facts which falls short of a full precognition. Usually that will be either a series of statements by police officers or a summary of the case by the police. In Boyle's case it was a summary of the facts by the police.
It was unfortunate that in that case the doubts that the inquiring officer, Detective Inspector Macmillan, had of the case did not appear in the summary, and the summary appeared to disclose circumstances which made it clear that there was not only a prima facie case but that there appeared sufficient evidence to justify the plea being accepted. When the doubts of this officer ultimately came to the attention of the procurator fiscal and the Crown Office, it was then that


it was possible to set in motion the procedure which ultimately led to this matter being disposed of by the accused pleading guilty in another Section 102 letter to the true crime, namely, attempting to pervert the course of justice.
I am sorry to be long with this answer, but it is important to deal with it properly and fully. The law of Scotland can be proud that we do not proceed to trial or pleas of guilty without ensuring that there is not merely a confession of guilt but that there is independent corroborative evidence of that guilt. Were it not for that procedure, this matter might have taken a very different course.

Oral Answers to Questions — ROAD TRAFFIC ACTS (PROSECUTIONS)

Mr. Fairbairn: asked the Lord Advocate how long it takes on average for a prosecution under the Road Traffic Acts to come to court in Perth, Lerwick, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Jedburgh.

The Lord Advocate: The average time from the occurrence of the offence until the first calling of the case in court is: Perth, six weeks; Lerwick, four weeks; Edinburgh, 20 weeks; Glasgow, 21 weeks; Jedburgh, six weeks.

Mr. Fairbairn: Does not that answer indicate the very patchy form that justice takes in Scotland under the Road Traffic Acts? Will the Lord Advocate, with all the new commissions and bureaucratic bodies that we have looking after the sheriff courts in Scotland, ensure that the shortest time for trial is the general time in all?

The Lord Advocate: I agree with the hon. and learned Gentleman that we want to cut down the delay in this and other parts of the summary procedure to the maximum possible extent. However, summary justice must be not only summary but justice. We have to balance the two requirements. As the hon. and learned Member will be aware, Edinburgh and Glasgow, where the delays are longest, are the busiest courts.

Oral Answers to Questions — SCOTTISH LEGISLATION (DRAFTING)

Mr. Rifkind: asked the Lord Advocate what steps he has taken

towards the implementation of the recommendations by the Committee chaired by the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) with regard to the preparation and drafting of Scottish legislation.

The Lord Advocate: The recommendations in relation to Scottish legislation of the Committee chaired by the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) are borne in mind by the Scottish parliamentary draftsmen—for whom I am responsible—and wherever possible the draftsmen put them into practice. To implement some of the recommendations—for example, Nos. 37, 38 89 and 90—would require new parliamentary procedures, and this is being considered by my right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council.

Mr. Rifkind: Can the Lord Advocate indicate the extent to which the Scottish parliamentary draftsmen have found it possible to implement the recommendations of the Renton Committee? Will these recommendations be just as relevant after the establishment of a Scottish Assembly, given the continuing need for separate Scottish legislation?

The Lord Advocate: Perhaps I might give a recent example from the Rating (Caravan Sites) Bill which received the Royal Assent yesterday. In Recommendation No. 33, the Renton Committee recommended that, instead of having complicated Scottish substitutions for mainly English provisions, there should be a separate Scottish part of the Bill so that the provisions could be set out complete and entire for Scotland. That was done in that legislation. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will welcome it.

Mr. Fairbairn: I welcome the example in that small Act, but does the right hon. and learned Gentleman appreciate that there is great concern about attempts to translate into Scottish terms what are unequivalent English terms? Does he agree that such translations are manifest throughout the Development Land Tax Bill and other legislation? Does he accept that the position is thoroughly unsatisfactory and that it compromises the law of Scotland?

The Lord Advocate: The hon. and learned Gentleman has made a rather


brash and sweeping statement. If there are that many difficulties, perhaps he will write to me about them. I am sure that he will understand that in fiscal legislation particularly difficulties are created by the fact that we want to achieve the same result in Scotland and England for taxpayers.

ADJOURNMENT (EASTER) DEBATE (MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER'S RULING)

Mr. Stonehouse: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am grateful to you for your permission to raise a very important point of order. I refer to the use by the Chair yesterday of Standing Orders Nos. 22 and 23. I appreciate—

Mr. Speaker: It would not be in order for the right hon. Gentleman to seek that I in any way change the ruling made by Mr. Deputy Speaker yesterday. When Mr. Deputy Speaker is in the Chair he has exactly the same authority as I have when I am in the Chair.

Mr. Stonehouse: I accept your ruling on that point, Mr. Speaker, but that is not the matter that I wish to raise. I wish to raise the principle of the use of Standing Order No. 22 to limit the debate on the Adjournment of the House. It is a well-known tradition of the House that individual Members look to the Chair for protection. In the past when individual hon. Members did not accept contemporary wisdom or had unpalatable facts to bring before the House—

Mr. Speaker: It looks as if the right hon. Gentleman is trying to raise what happened yesterday. I am not prepared for him to raise this morning what happened yesterday. Therefore, a general argument about the interpretation of rules would only hold up the business of the House if he raised it at this time.

Mr. Stonehouse: I accept your ruling, Mr. Speaker, and I am not trying to dispute it. But, with respect, it is a matter of considerable constitutional importance. The traditional duty of the Chair to protect an individual hon. Member has not been adhered to because yesterday Mr. Deputy Speaker brought an hon. Member's speech to an end, not because he

was out of order, but because Mr. Deputy Speaker did not like its content—

Mr. Speaker: The right hon. Gentleman is beginning to reflect on the judgment of Mr. Deputy Speaker. It is the duty of the occupant of the Chair to protect both the rights of individual hon. Members and the rights of the House, which are not unimportant. I am not prepared to continue this matter now. It is not a matter on which I can rule this morning.

Mr. Stonehouse: I accept entirely your ruling, Mr. Speaker. But I have had an opportunity of looking at precedents to the matter and I would like to draw them to your attention.

Mr. Speaker: The right hon. Gentle-may not do that at this time. I am not prepared to go further on what happened yesterday or to pass judgment.

Mr. Stonehouse: Mr. Stonehouse rose—

Mr. Speaker: I am moving on to the next business.

Later—

Mr. Kershaw: I shall be brief, Mr. Speaker. Am I right in assuming from the Official Report and from something which you said this morning that the right hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Stonehouse) was ruled out of order yesterday not because he was being repetitious or irrelevant but because he was taking too long? If I am right, are you prepared to rule how long a speech should take?

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is wrong on every point.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. Whitelaw: May I ask the Leader of the House to state the business for the week after the recess?

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Michael Foot): The business for the first week after the Adjournment will be as follows:—

MONDAY 26th April—Second Reading of the Iron and Steel (Amendment) Bill.

Proceedings on the Statute Law (Repeals) Bill [Lords], which is a consolidation measure.

Motions relating to the Prevention of Terrorism (Supplemental Temporary Provisions) Orders.

TUESDAY 27th April—Second Reading of the Health Services Bill.

WEDNESDAY 28th April—Supply [18th Allotted Day]: There will be a debate on local government.

THURSDAY 29th April—Second Reading of the Industry (Amendment) Bill, and of the Parliamentary and Other Pensions and Salaries Bill.

Friday 30th April—Private Members' Bills.

Mr. Whitelaw: When will the Select Committee on direct elections to the European Assembly be set up? It will have a considerable job to do and there is, therefore, some urgency about it. Can the Leader of the House say when the Order will be made to increase the price of school meals from 15p to 20p, as announced in the Public Expenditure White Paper?

Mr. Foot: I cannot answer the second question at the moment, but I will as soon as I can. I agree that the first matter is one of some urgency and I hope to make an announcement shortly.

Mr. Budgen: Does the Leader of the House have any plans for a debate on the proceedings of the Committee of Selection, particularly on the appointments that the Committee has made since the time when the Government ceased to have a majority on the Floor of the House?

Mr. Foot: I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman was present when Questions were put to me yesterday by the Opposition. I replied to the comments made and I thought that my reply was considered satisfactory by those who heard it. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman did not have an opportunity of expressing his views. First of all, it is a matter for the Committee of Selection. We shall see what it recommends. Both the Committee and the House have to take what has occurred into account.

Mr. Prescott: Has my right hon. Friend noticed Early-Day Motion No. 343 on today's Order Paper, signed by over 30 hon. Members, calling for an immediate investigation by the Govern-

ment—and time for a debate—into the allegations of payments by BP to Italian political parties?

[That this House calls upon Her Majesty's Government to provide time at the first possible opportunity to debate the matter of the payments made by Shell and British Petroleum to Italian political parties; and further urges the Government to begin an immediate investigation into the circumstances surrounding those payments, similar to the investigations now being carried out by the Governments of France, the Netherlands, Germany and the United States of America]

Will the Government make a statement today, as it appears that these payments were not just political payments but covered advertising costs?

Mr. Foot: My hon. Friend raised this question yesterday and I replied to him. I have nothing further to add to what I said then. I cannot say that a statement will be made today on the subject, but, as I indicated yesterday, I believe that the House of Commons will wish to return to the matter in some form after the recess. I cannot yet say what form that will take. I adhere to the reply that I made yesterday.

Mr. Beith: Is the Leader of the House aware that the composition of the Committee of Selection does not reflect that of the House? The Committee has put a motion before the House on many occasions seeking to add another member to it, but this has been objected to. Will he find time to debate such a motion, or an alternative Government motion, to enable us to discuss the future membership of the Committee to ensure that it and other Committees reflect the new composition of the House?

Mr. Foot: Generally there has been no criticism in the House over the conduct of the Committee, although if hon. Members wanted a debate that might indicate some criticism. Over the years it has done its work without any criticism in the House. The best course is for the House to wait and see what the Committee of Selection says. I am sure that the Committee will behave as responsibly in the future as it has in the past.

Mr. Kinnock: Has my right hon. Friend seen reports of alleged bribery in


connection with defence contracts? In view of the recess which is starting today, what procedure can be followed by the House? Will any inquiries into these matters be covered by the sub judice rule and can the House have a statement or a debate as early as possible?

Mr. Foot: I cannot comment on this matter because of conceivable legal proceedings. But when we return the House will be able to see what the situation is then, decide in what form the matter can be raised and see whether the sub judice rule applies. I cannot make a comment on it now.

Mr. Maurice Macmillan: Will the right hon. Gentleman ensure that when the House does return to the question of BP and other allegations of bribery it will be in a form which includes the activities of other countries, which are our competitors, as well as those of British companies?

Mr. Foot: I am not sure that the right hon. Gentleman has quoted me accurately, and I am not certain that I shall quote myself accurately, but I think that I said yesterday that I believed that the House would wish to return to the subject in some way. I believe that that will be the situation. However, I do not want to say anything further now about the form in which that might occur.

Mr. Wigley: When do the Government hope that their proposals for a development authority for rural Wales will be discussed in the Chamber? By what procedure will the matter be pursued thereafter? I ask the question with the Welsh Grand Committee particularly in mind.

Mr. Foot: I am not sure when the arrangements will be made, and whether further discussion on the subject should be in the Welsh Grand Committee, although it is obviously a subject that could arise there. Whether there is any possibility of having any reference to it on the Floor of the House depends on other problems of which the hon. Gentleman is well aware. I shall certainly consider the matter and see whether there may be a possibility of discussion in the Welsh Grand Committee.

Mr. Michael Latham: Is the right hon. Gentleman saying that the Government intend to say nothing more today about the serious allegations in the Daily Mail? Surely the matter cannot be simply left there at this stage? There will be widespread public concern about it.

Mr. Foot: I fully understand that reports of such a nature may give rise to great public concern, but in view of the possibility of legal proceedings it is not proper for me to comment on it now. If the House were still sitting next week, the matter would no doubt be raised then. I dare say that as soon as the House returns hon. Members will raise it afresh.

Several Hon. Members: Several Hon. Membersrose—

Mr. Speaker: I appeal to hon. Members to ask very brief questions because there is a statement to follow and it will be taking the time of the Adjournment debates.

Mr. Madden: My right hon. Friend will appreciate that a number of industries feel considerable concern about the effects of cheap imports and that there is a widespread belief that anti-dumping procedures are inadequate. Will my right hon. Friend give the House any opportunity to discuss these matters in detail, in view of the concern here and in the trade union movement?

Mr. Foot: I know that there is a very wide interest in the subject. The matter was raised during the debate on the Budget, and it is a subject that may be discussed in all the economic debates in the House. It is possible for the matter to be raised in deputations and representations by trade unions and others. But there is no opportunity for a debate on precisely that subject in the week we return.

Mrs. Bain: Will the dummy Bill on devolution to Scotland and Wales be available to hon. Members when they return after the recess? When does the right hon. Gentleman expect the House to debate the Bill?

Mr. Foot: If the hon. Lady is expecting a Bill to be published during the Easter Recess, I must disappoint her. We are not in favour of dummy Bills. We are determined to introduce the real Bill which will carry through devolution.

Sir David Renton: I sympathise with the right hon. Gentleman in having inherited from his predecessor an excessively heavy legislative load, involving there having to be no fewer than 10 Standing Committees. Some hon. Members are sitting on several Standing Committees. The whole of the legislative machine is under strain. When the House reassembles, will the right hon. Gentleman reconsider this situation, because it dos not make for good quality of legislation?

Mr. Foot: I understand that the legislative burden on hon. Members during this Session is very heavy. Nobody can deny that or that it leads to considerable difficulties. But, as a member of a Cabinet who was in favour of all the measures concerned, I cannot very well disown any responsibility for them. It is important to get all those measures on the statute book as swiftly as we can.

Mr. Stonehouse: Will the right hon. Gentleman provide time to debate the very important Early-Day Motion No. 342, in the name of the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell)?

[That in the opinion of this House the use of Standing Order No. 22 on 13th April 1976 ought not to be cited or drawn into precedent on any future occasion.]

Mr. Foot: The question whether we should have a debate on a motion criticising the Chair is important. I do not for a moment suggest that such motions should remain on the Notice Paper for any length of time without the House having a chance to consider them. It may be that the right hon. Gentleman who put down the motion will wish to withdraw it. That has happened on some previous occasions. We shall have to see when the House meets again whether the motion is still on the Notice Paper. I do not underrate the fact that if a motion criticising the Chair is put on the Notice Paper serious consideration must be given to whether it should be debated.

Mr. Noble: Will my right hon. Friend reconsider his answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Madden)? Is it not a fact that in the next few months negotiations which could fundamentally change the arrangements for international trade will start? In those circumstances, is it not important that

the House should have a full day's debate on this very important issue?

Mr. Foot: I do not depreciate the importance of the issue, but, as I said before, the subject was raised by many right hon. and hon. Members during the debate on the Budget and it can be raised in general economic debates. It figures very prominently in the discussions taking place elsewhere. At present, I cannot see that we can have a special debate on the subject, despite its importance.

SCOTTISH AND WELSH ASSEMBLIES (ACCOMMODATION)

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Michael Foot): The House will recall that paragraphs 289 and 290 of Cmnd. 6348, the White Paper on devolution to Scotland and Wales, explained the Government's plans for housing the Scottish and Welsh Assemblies. Briefly, we propose that the Scottish Assembly should use the Royal High School building in Edinburgh, and the Welsh Assembly the Temple of Peace and Health in Cardiff. The capital costs are broadly estimated as being in the range of £2 million to £3 million for Scotland and £1 million to £2 million for Wales.
As the House knows, preparatory planning work has been going ahead without commitment in the appropriate Government Departments. It is clear from this that, for each country, a period of two years is required between the time of initial commitment to limited expenditure and having the building ready for the Assemblies to use. Unless a start is made now on measures towards acquiring and adapting the buildings, they could not be ready for the Assemblies until after the spring of 1978. In the Government's view this would not be acceptable, and we are therefore authorising the Property Services Agency to enter into commitments to the extent necessary to enable the Assemblies to occupy the buildings by spring 1978. Provision will be covered at the earliest opportunity in Estimates laid before Parliament; if necessary, there will be a drawing on the Contingencies Fund. Expenditure in the financial year 1976–77 is provisionally estimated at £1 million for Scotland and £500,000 for Wales.

Mr. Whitelaw: I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman, with his long experience in the House, will agree that it is always dangerous for Governments to anticipate legislation in this way. There are, however, precedents for action of the sort that he proposes.
Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that the terms put forward are vague and show a considerable expenditure of public money? If the Welsh Assembly should ever be set up, does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it will, at any rate at the start, have an opportunity denied to most democratic assemblies if it is to meet in a Temple of Peace and Health?

Mr. Foot: Of course, I understand that the House is sensitive about any such arrangements for public expenditure that have not been passed through the House, but if we did not take this action now we should be prejudging the situation. We should make it impossible for the Assemblies to be in operation if the House decided to go ahead, as I trust it will. Therefore, I think that it was a proper course for us to take.
The detail of the money will be open to discussion in the House. I think that that covers the right hon. Gentleman's point about the vagueness of the figures. The figures are a matter for the Property Services Agency, which is answerable to the House for the details.
As for the suggestion that there is any posibility of our not proceeding with a Welsh Assembly, I should like to remove those doubts from the right hon. Gentleman's mind at once. We fought and won two elections in Wales on this proposition, and we propose to carry out faithfully our obligation to the people of Wales, just as to the people of Scotland and the other people of the United Kingdom.
I believe that a Temple of Peace and Health is a very proper place for this to happen in Wales, if not in more barbarous parts of the United Kingdom.

Mr. Heffer: Is my right hon. Friend aware—I am sure he is—that the proposals for devolution are not universally welcomed by all Members in all parties, except perhaps by SNP and Welsh nationalist Members? In view of the fact that only last night my right hon.

Friend quite rightly reminded me that the people had voted on the Common Market and that the matter had gone through the House of Commons in the form of legislation, is it not quite wrong to decide to go ahead with the establishment of buildings even before the House of Commons has decided to give the Bill a Second Reading?
I ask my right hon. Friend to have a further look at this matter. I ask him to put the issue of devolution and separation to the whole of the British people in a form of referendum in the three constituent parts so that they can decide whether they want devolution or separation.

Mr. Foot: I hope that I am not too thick-skinned. I am aware that there is not universal acclaim for the idea of going ahead with our devolution proposals. I am fully aware of that. Nonetheless, we propose to proceed. We are deeply committed because we think that it is the right course not only in the interests of devolution in Scotland and Wales but in the interests of the United Kingdom. That is one of the paramount reasons for our being determined to proceed with our proposals. As we are doing so, we think it is right to make these contingency plans. If we did not make them, we should be frustrating or injuring the eventual decision of the House of Commons.
I believe that there are precedents of a perfectly proper character for what we are doing. As I have indicated, the House will have further opportunities to discuss these matters. I think that the referendum issue is a much wider subject altogether. I have the very gravest doubts whether the problem can be eased by any form of referendum. I believe it is much better that the House of Commons should eventually make up its mind on this question on the basis of all the discussions that will have taken place. That is an indication of our determination to retain the final authority here at Westminster. I do not believe that that authority can easily be dissipated by referenda in different parts of the country.

Mr. Gwynfor Evans: I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his new responsibilities in these matters and I wish him well in them. Will he give an assurance


that the new home for the Welsh Assembly will be equipped, as so many courts and public institutions are now equipped, with a system of simultaneous translation so that Assembly Members may debate matters in either the Welsh or the English language, unlike this House and Parliament?

Mr. Foot: I fully agree with what the hon. Gentleman says. I believe that a Welsh Assembly should make available the fullest possible facilities for the proper use of the beautiful Welsh language.

Mr. Reid: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the statement of his hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland who has responsibility for Scottish devolution, who said "There has been no slippage. We are bang on target."? What has happened to all the brave Labour talk of elections to the Assembly in 1976 or 1977? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that that statement plus today's statement will be treated with contempt in Scotland? Surely it would be better for the Lord President to come clean and to recognise that, apart from the difficulties of getting the Assembly Bill through the House, there is now no chance of the Assembly being established before the next General Election. Does he not appreciate that the people of Scotland will draw their own conclusions?

Mr. Foot: What I have announced has no implication of holding up any date for the elections. It will be perfectly possible for the elections to be held as soon as is convenient after the House of Commons and Parliament have made their decision. There is no implication in what I have said that will in any sense delay the elections once Parliament has decided on the way in which it wants to proceed.
Far from thinking that the people in Scotland will imagine that this announcement is a sign of our slipping from our intentions, I think that the whole House, including my hon. Friends who have been critical, will have made exactly the opposite deduction. I think that the whole House will accept it as an indication of the firm intention of the Government to proceed. The people in Scotland, whatever their views on the subject, will recognise that the Government are determined to carry through the programme that we put to the country.

Mr. Kinnock: Is my right hon. Friend aware that in a matter of irreversible constitutional change such as devolution it is not necessarily enough merely to take the assent of this Parliament? Does he accept that it also needs to enjoy the active and enthusiastic consent of at least the majority of the people that it will affect? Is he aware that without that kind of consent, which can be ascertained only in a referendum, the Assembly building in Cardiff—the Temple of Peace and Health—could be a scene of disbelief and stealth?

Mr. Foot: I know that my hon. Friend has very special views on this subject which he urges with great powers of advocacy, but he happens to be in a small minority. There is no harm in that, but he has a lot of people to convert. I do not accept the view that if the House of Commons carried through this proposal it would be objected to by people in Wales because we have not had a referendum. I say to my hon. Friend and to the country that in my view we should be extremely sparing in using any such instrument as a referendum. I do not believe that this is an appropriate occasion on which to use a referendum. I shall need a great deal of convincing before I change my mind about that.

Mr. Russell Johnston: I recognise the obvious necessity for the Leader of the House to make an announcement in advance of expenditure of this sort, but will he assure me that no part of the advance expenditure that is intended will be used for altering the shape of the debating chamber in advance of a decision by Parliament as to the appropriate form of election to the Scottish Assembly?

Mr. Foot: If the hon. Gentleman is trying to tempt me to make a declaration on proportional representation at this stage, I am afraid that he will be disappointed. However, I do not believe that that would necessarily affect the way in which the Chamber is devised. I am sure that there will be time for the views of the hon. Gentleman, and of others in Scotland and elsewhere, to be made known on that aspect.

Mr. Sillars: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the decision to go ahead with the work on the Royal High School will be welcomed in Scotland? The cost will be about one-tenth of the cost to the


British taxpayer of maintaining the milk powder mountain through the common agricultural policy. Is my right hon. Friend aware that of even greater importance is the power that the Assembly will exercise once it is set up? Do the Government still stick by the earlier statements that were made by Ministers on 18th January in Scotland at the start of Labour's devolution versus separation campaign, in which they showed their remarkable degree of hostility to the Scottish Assembly exercising substantial trade and industry powers?

Mr. Foot: I do not accept my hon. Friend's interpretation of what was said on that occasion. My hon. Friend has tabled a Question to me for Written Answer and he will receive his answer during the day or tomorrow, whatever may be the time arranged for him to get it. I have said in my answer that I hope my hon. Friend and others will give me further time to consider some of these specific questions which they have been asking before we make any general statement.
As I have said on this subject and on other matters, I hope that everyone is quite clear that the Government will proceed with the general proposals that we laid before the House. We take into account the representations made in Scotland, England and elsewhere. We shall proceed with the matter as fast as we possibly can. It is an extremely complicated matter, and that is why we must take time. I do not want to lay down too detailed a time scale. As for our determination to carry the matter through, I hope that no one will have any doubt about that whatsoever.

Mr. George Younger: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that this is a matter which undoubtedly affects Parliament? Does he realise that Members on both sides of the House will want to be consulted not merely about the sums of money involved but about the details of accommodation and facilities which will be available? How can they do this before they know the details of the Government's dummy Bill? Does this not indicate that the right hon. Gentleman should consult the House before the details are finalised?

Mr. Foot: The fact that I came to the House and made this announcement

today indicates that I am eager to have consultations with the House on all these matters. I do not think that any deduction could be drawn in an opposite sense. There will be plenty of opportunities for discussing all these matters.

Mr. Buchan: Does my right hon. Friend accept that he was not totally accurate when he said that every party represented in this House was in favour of devolution? The Scottish National Party seeks devolution merely as a means of achieving separation. [An HON. MEMBER: "Rubbish."] Is the SNP now rejecting separation? That is interesting, and it raises an important point
I accept that we should take these preliminary steps leading to a devolved Assembly in Scotland, which I welcome. At the same time, in order to prevent those who wish to elect such an Assembly from bringing about separation, is it not proper that this House should democratically decide whether to have a referendum Bill? Would it not be going against the right of the House if we decided here to have a referendum Bill?
Secondly, should we not hold such a referendum, since the question of independence and placing ourselves under a separate Government transcends parliamentary rights?
If I may revert to my right hon. Friend's favourite reading—the Putney debate in the seventeenth century—I remind him of his brilliant use of the quotation from Colonel Rainborough in his speech in the debate on the EEC referendum—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I ask the hon. Gentleman to bear in mind those Members whose Adjournment time is being taken and to come to the point of his question.

Mr. Buchan: The point of my question—I am almost in the middle of it—is that it is therefore proper that, while proceeding with preliminary steps for the creation of Assembly buildings, we should also proceed with the preliminary steps for a referendum to be held in Scotland and in Wales to decide on the parameters of the devolution which we wish to bring about.

Mr. Foot: I am certainly prepared to listen to any representations which my


hon. Friend may make now or in future. In response to an earlier question, I was merely indicating my feelings about referenda. I am doubtful whether there is any possibility of any form of referendum being of much use in this situation. I suppose that there is a chink of my mind left open on the subject, and my hon. Friend will have to see what he can do there. What the Government are proposing is in no way a departure from the principle of consent, on which I believe these matters should be carried through. We secured the consent of the British people to proceed in this way at the General Elections which we fought in 1974.

Mr. Fletcher-Cooke: If these large sums of money are to be spent on the Royal High School in Edinburgh and the Temple in Cardiff for the benefit of the Scottish and Welsh Assemblies, does the Lord President have any machinery available by which the moneys can be paid by the people of Scotland and Wales?

Mr. Foot: The hon. and learned Gentleman is making a suggestion which detracts from one of our main purposes in the whole operation. We believe that, if we can carry through this programme on the general lines which we have proposed, so far from injuring the position of England as against other parts of the United Kingdom we would be holding together the United Kingdom. That is also one of our predominant purposes in the whole operation.

Mr. William Hamilton: When does my right hon. Friend intend to produce the real Bill? Secondly, in view of the extreme constitutional importance of this matter, will he give an absolute assurance that in no circumstances will he

recommend the House to accept the guillotine procedure on it?

Mr. Foot: I agree that a Bill of this character is of major constitutional importance. No one can possibly dissent from that. It has always been the custom that major constitutional measures are carried through overwhelmingly on the Floor of the House of Commons. It was the case that another Bill of a major constitutional character—the European Communities Bill—was drummed through the House by the guillotine. That was a disgraceful occasion. Whatever we do, I hope that we shall not follow that precedent. But any Government would have to take precautions to ensure that, whilst giving the fullest possible opportunities for debate, they would have a chance, if the House so willed, of getting the measure through eventually. That matter must be taken into account. I think my hon. Friend will probably accept that I have given a perfectly fair answer to his question.
The Bill will be presented in the next Session of Parliament. We hope and are determined to carry through the Bill, if the House wishes it. I fully understand the pressures and eagerness of hon. Members to see that we proceed with this matter. The announcement which I have made today, which does not raise all these questions, is proof that we are proceeding as fast as we can.

Several Hon. Members: Several Hon. Members rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Kershaw: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I am about to make a statement myself. This is not the time to continue the debate on this matter.

HEALTH AND SAFETY AT WORK (AMENDMENT)

12.36 p.m.

Mr. Bob Cryer: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974; and for connected purposes.
At present, the position regarding weight limits is confused. The Agriculture (Lifting of Heavy Weights) Regulations 1959 provide for any workers employed in agriculture to lift
any load consisting of a sack or a bag together with its contents lifted or carried unaided a maximum of 180 lb.
Yet the Woollen and Worsted Textiles (Lifting of Heavy Weights) Regulations 1926 put the maximum where the yarn, cloth, tool or appliance is reasonably compact at 150 lb. and where it is not a rigid body at 120 lb. There is no reasonable assumption for supposing that there is any physical difference between textile and agricultural workers.
The Factories Act 1961, Section 72(1), limits the load for any employed person to
any load so heavy as to be likely to cause injury 
to the person lifting, carrying or moving it.
My Bill would, of course, retain that general limitation, but, in order to clarify and improve the situation, the maximum weight permitted in any circumstances for adult males would be 112 lb.
In addition, the Woollen and Worsted Textiles (Lifting of Heavy Weights) Regulations contain provisions for the maximum weight applying to any person lifting to be multiplied by the number of persons lifting. That can cause grave risks to be taken because of the potential unequal distribution of weight when two or more persons are engaged in lifting. Therefore, I shall include provision for an additional person to be required where the load is above 200 lb.
The Bill would be classed as a "relevant statutory provision" under Schedule I to the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act and, as such, would be subject to the powers of the Minister under Section I of that Act. That would mean that, should the Minister decide

that further improvements were necessary as part of a complete review of the lifting of weights in industry and agriculture, he would not be hindered by an Act which would not be part of the general legislative pattern. The Minister would thus be able to repeal or alter the provisions of the Act by Regulation made under the major statute, provided that any alterations were
designed to maintain or improve the standards of health, safety and welfare.
However, it seems to me to be important to take action quickly, because of the number of back injuries which occur, rather than wait for a review.
Indeed, in a Written Question on 31st March 1976 I asked the Secretary of State for Employment
what consultations have been instituted with the Health and Safety Commission to produce legislation further to control the lifting of heavy weights by work people in order to reduce the demands on the Health Service arising from back injuries.
The Minister replied:
I am advised by the Chairman of the Health and Safety Commission that the Health and Safety Executive has held informal discussions with representatives of a number of organisations having wide experience in the problems of the manual lifting of heavy weights. In addition, it is intended to include the subject in a review of the wider field of ergonomics which is to be undertaken by the Executive."—[Official Report, 31st March 1976; Vol. 908, c. 486.]
However, the Commission and the Executive have a heavy programme of work—the Chairman of the Commission is to chair an important Committee on asbestos—and it may be some years before such a review could be completed. Legislative action is urgently needed, hence the need for this modest piece of legislation to take effect in the very near future.
The position has not changed in the five months since November last year, when I asked the Minister for information on the number of back injuries arising in industry. I asked him for the number of accidents reported in 1971, 1972, 1973 and 1974 which could be attributed to lifting heavy loads, how many of these resulted in injury to the back, and what proposals the Health and Safety Commission had for either Regulations or a code of practice manual on lifting of heavy loads.
The Minister replied that he had been
informed by the Chairman of the Health and Safety Commission that the estimated number of accidents involving strains, sprains, etc., to the trunk, including slipped discs, in accident notifications received by Her Majesty's Factory Inspectorate under the Factories Act 1961 were:

1971
49,280


1972
47,480


1973
50,460


1974
51,480".

In each year there were something approaching 2,500 slipped disc cases, which, as hon. Members will realise, take-up hospital beds for an extremely long time in effecting a cure. The Minister added:
the Health and Safety Commission proposes to consider the question of Regulations or a code of practice ".—[Official Report, 5th November 1975; Vol. 899, c. 172–3.]

If my Bill assists to reduce that toll of injury, as I believe it will, it will do a great deal of good.

There is also the enormous cost to the nation to consider. Most hon. Members will have received a pamphlet from the Backpain Association, written by Dr. David Delvin. Chapter 6 of that pamphlet gives some observations on cost. I quote:
Perhaps the best answer is 'an awful lot of money!' With 50,000 people off work every day with back trouble, time lost to industry and business thanks to back pain is more serious than time lost through strikes!

It goes on to comment about heavy jobs, such as mining, and it says:
and among miners, a survey at one colliery showed that nearly one-fifth of all time lost from work was due to back trouble

It then goes on to say:
but even in lighter work, backache is very common—and very costly. A light engineering firm emloying 1,000 people worked out that back troubles cost them as much as £10,000 a year—or £10 for every single member of staff. Calculations show that if you apply these figures to the whole of business and commerce, British industry is losing something like £200,000,000 a year through back pain.

While it is intended that the general provisions of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act shall apply to the provisions of this Bill, and that it shall be subject to such means of enforcement as improvement and prohibition notices and other provisions, it is also intended that the application of Section 47 shall be limited in its application in that the

Bill would give rise to civil liability under actions for breach of statutory duty. It is in this field that many workers have found that the various existing Regulations have been most onerous.

There was a recent case of a farm worker who was standing on a lorry taking sacks of grain from a loading door and stacking them on the lorry. For some reason one sack was larger and took more grain than usual, and when it was handed to the worker who was at a slightly lower level the load simply pushed him to the floor. He received severe and permanent injuries to his back such that he is unable to work at that type of job again. He claimed compensation in a civil court and the defence used the statutory limit of 180 lb. as a reason for refusing compensation. The case was settled out of court because it could not be satisfactorily established whether the weight was over 180 lb. The weight was a great deal too heavy in the first place and has resulted in the loss of a person's good health, time in hospital and the use of valuable facilities and time in court. So long as the statutory limits remain high, so long will accidents like that continue to happen.

As a further example, in a letter written to me in March this year a textile worker complains:
' may I give you another example of unfair situations regarding the Health and Safety at Work Act and the attitude of management. An inspector employed in our cloth inspection department had occasion to lift a roll of cloth off a 'batching unit'. There is no good access to the above machine and the operator/ inspector would have to stand sideways and attempt to lift approximately 150 lb. or more by leaning over the machine. Requests were made by the men in the inspector's department to make the job more accessible or redesign the batching unit for better access. That was two years ago!

The access was altered only under threat of legal action by the men, and photographic evidence was taken which resulted in action. This sort of situation should not be necessary.

By bringing down the maximum weight to 112 lb., we should save the nation money, prevent many damaging accidents, keep more people at work in a better state of health and release valuable National Health Service facilities for other uses. Any future improvements


recommended by the Commission can readily be incorporated in the way I have described. If action can be taken swiftly by approving the Bill, it will clarify a difficult and confused situation, and surely, in health and safety at work, that can only be of benefit. I hope that the House will give its approval to the Bill.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Bob Cryer, Mr. Dennis Skinner, Mr. Max Madden, Miss Jo Richardson, Mr. Kevin McNamara, Mr. Ted Leadbitter, Mr. Mike Noble, Mr. Norman Buchan, Mr. Neil Kinnock, Mr. George Rodgers, Mr. Eric S. Heffer and Mr. Stan Thorne.

HEALTH AND SAFETY AT WORK (AMENDMENT)

Mr. Bob Cryer: Mr. Bob Cryer accordingly presented a Bill to amend the Health and Safety at Work etc. 1974; and for connected purposes; and the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 14th May, and to be printed. [Bill 127.]

STATUTORY INSTRUMENT

Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 73A (Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &;c.).

BETTING, GAMING AND LOTTERIES

That the Pool Competitions Act 1971 (Continuance) Order 1976, a draft of which was laid before this House on 31st March, be approved.—[Mr. Dormand.]

Question agreed to.

FOSTER CHILDREN

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Dormand.]

12.46 p.m.

Mr. John Hannam: Last Wednesday, as almost her last act as Secretary of State for Social Services, the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle) gave details of the proposed social security increases next autumn. One of these was to increase the higher rate of attendance allowance to £12·20 and the lower rate to £8·15 per week. This afternoon I am grateful for this opportunity to draw the attention of the House to a small group of severely handicapped children living in the community who will derive no benefit from these increases. These are children in the care of a local authority who are boarded out with foster parents. I should emphasise that there is a very small number involved—possibly about 300—although I hope that if what I advocate today is accepted a number of those children at present in vastly more expensive residential care or hospital care will find foster parents who are willing to undertake the very dedicated and demanding work that caring for a handicapped child entails.
At present, as we have been told in numerous parliamentary replies and in answer to representations from various organisations, the Government believe that all responsibility in this matter should rest with local councils. For example, the former Minister of State, the late Brian O'Malley said, in reply to my Question:
Payment of attendance allowance has not been considered appropriate where a local authority has assumed responsibility for the care of a severely disabled child, whether, in one of its own homes or by boarding out."—[Official Report, 4th November 1975; Vol. 899, c. 211.]
I shall examine this principle in detail in a few moments but first I wish to stress that by taking this attitude the Government, at current rates, are saving the Exchequer a mere £150,000 a year—a figure which would easily be recouped if a few more children were to be fostered out from expensive residential care.
The Government are fond of taunting the Opposition for advocating individual increases in public expenditure. I hope


the Minister will appreciate that my efforts to extend the attendance allowance to a handful of children are no more to be castigated on that score than are his own very proper efforts to increase the take-up rate of the various benefits which he and his colleagues have introduced in the past two years.
The Minister, in a letter to the hon. Member for Eccles (Mr. Carter-Jones) stated that the attendance allowance is intended to help those severely disabled people whose care is not primarily provided out of public funds. I hope to persuade the House that these principles are not overriding, and that, even if they are accepted, the Government have drawn the line in the wrong place. Foster parents receive very little from public funds and should be treated on a par with other parents and not with residential institutions.

Mr. Lewis Carter-Jones: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising this matter and I am sure that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will do his best to respond. I have a letter from the Eccles Society for Mentally Handicapped Children, which does great work. It makes this point about the cruel anomalies. We are going to impose a double disability on a disabled child in not having a home—at least, a home with love and happy surroundings. If we are to avoid institutionalisation, we have to give money, in addition, to foster parents to take on this burden. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has made this point.

Mr. Hannam: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that further evidence for my case. Fundamentally, I believe that where cash payments are made the Government have a duty to ensure that they are equitable throughout the country. Social security has always been regarded as a national responsibility, and is so even in the Government's proposals for devolution. In those proposals, social security is to be retained centrally. If the Government believe that that principle is so important even for devolution, how can they be prepared to allow this discrimination to continue against such a small and defenceless minority of children?
The Government have themselves already breached their own principle. The

mobility allowance will be paid to a child regardless of his status. Whether he is with foster parents, or in residential care, or in hospital, or with his own parents, he will still be entitled to it. The Government draw a distinction, however, in saying that local authorities have a duty to provide attendance but not to provide mobility. That is a false distinction. A foster parent is a parent first and an attendant only second. Although the Government's argument has some plausibility when applied to residential care, in view of the pitiful allowances paid by some local authorities they cannot pretend that their distinction between the mobility allowance and the attendance allowance holds water.
I hope, and have some reason to believe, that the Government may have been waiting to see how the mobility allowance works for children before extending the attendance allowance to foster children, but there is no justification for further delay.
The second reason why the Government should take responsibility for allowing the attendance allowance to foster parents is a pragmatic one. The attendance allowance is one of those benefits that are tied by the Social Security Act to the higher of our two measures of inflation, wages or costs. Whatever our feelings about the announced change in the methods of assessment, it is clear to anyone that those whose benefits are so tied are, in a sense, on to a good thing—rather like the civil servants with their inflation-proof pensions.
Does anyone believe that local authorities, unless they are given a severe prodding by the Government, will match these upratings, pound for pound? Local authorities are now subject to severe cutbacks in their planned social services programmes, and in many authorities inescapable commitments have already devoured all expansion in the coming year. They are also subject to cash limits in the coming year. It is unrealistic and unworldly of the Government to expect local authorities automatically to match the increases that the Exchequer can pay without a mandatory duty being imposed upon them to do so.
The next argument that is raised against extending the allowance to foster


parents is even more improbable. On 4th November, Brian O'Malley told me, in reply to another Question:
If the attendance allowance became payable for the small number of children that he describes in his Question, many of the foster parents concerned would be no better off, because the local authorities would clearly reflect the receipt of that allowance in the payment made to the foster parent."—[Official Report, 4th November 1975; Vol. 899, c. 211.]
I shall describe later the variation in allowances that appear to be paid throughout the country, and I can assure hon. Members that most foster parents would be much better off even if the local authority withdrew the whole of any extra allowance.
Allied to this argument is the point that the local authority is in a better position to judge the actual needs of a child, that it can pay an allowance to children who would not qualify for the attendance allowance, and can pay more than the attendance allowance if the severity of the handicap warrants it. Nothing that I propose affects this in the least. I am merely seeking to ensure that the same basic minimum is payable to those children who satisfy the Attendance Allowances Board's very strict criteria.
In discussions with the All-Party Disablement Group, the Department of Health and Social Security has raised administrative problems—we expect them to be raised by most Government Departments—in refusing this kind of amendment. I do not think that the Department's heart is very deeply in its arguments. It has been suggested that because a child is likely to be boarded out from residential care where the attendance allowance would not be paid, there would be a delay in receipt of the allowance.
Even if this were true—and it would be regrettable—it would be of no great moment. The placement of handicapped children for long-term fostering is a highly specialised business, and there would be plenty of time to make the administrative arrangements.
It has also been claimed that if children were popping in and out of residential care and foster homes the system would break down. That argument is most unlikely, and can be discounted. There are already arrangements in

analogous situations for people to retain the allowance when they undergo short-term hospitalisation, for example. This could easily cover short holiday periods, or periods of assessment in a residential home.
I now pass from the theoretical argument to the practical aspect, as it has been represented to me. I would not like my remarks to be taken as a criticism of all local authorities. Some local authorities have very imaginative schemes for fostering children with severe problems, whereby foster parents able and willing to provide care for them receive much-enhanced boarding-out rates. Two authorities which have recently received publicity for their schemes are those in Kent and Birmingham. If authorities throughout the country made similar arrangements—although I believe that the arguments I have already adduced have great weight—I would not be asking for this change in the attendance allowance.
Following the replies from the Department that it had no information on the number of children concerned, a survey was undertaken about 12 months ago to discover how many foster children local authorities considered eligible for attendance allowance at either rate, how many foster parents were receiving enhanced boarding-out allowances for handicapped children, and what value of allowances could be made and was being paid by local authorities.
The survey was not a large one. Forty authorities were approached and 24 replied, and only a proportion of those 24 were able to give substantive replies. Ignoring the fact that non-respondents are perhaps less likely to board out handicapped children, it appears that there are only about 400 children in England and Wales for whom foster parents are receiving additional payments, and only about 300 children boarded out would be eligible at the higher or the lower rate. This figure matches that subsequently estimated by the Department—that the number would be unlikely to exceed 300 and that the cost would not be more than £150,000 a year at current rates of benefit.
What I wish to draw attention to are the actual scales of payment by local authorities to such foster parents. Most authorities operated scales according to age. These ranged from low figures of


£3·43 basic allowance plus £2·10 maximum addition, a grand total of £5·53 which compared unfavourably even then with the lower rate of attendance allowance of £6·20. Some authorities ranged up to figures slightly in excess of the attendance allowance. Only a quarter of those who replied could, on their scales, give a maximum extra allowance to parents caring for 17-year-olds equal to the higher rate of attendance allowance introduced last November.
There are two principal effects of Government policy. First, foster parents may, through dedication and devotion, be prepared to undertake the very arduous work involved, and willingly do so, although they are given less consideration and assistance than natural parents. To many their commitment is such that payment or non-payment of the allowance would not alter their decision to undertake the work. Be that as it may, we are still running the risk of depriving the child; but we are depriving even more those children who are in hospital or in residential care and who could be fostered if suitable foster parents were willing and available.
The Government's recent consultative document accentuates the need to provide boarding out and fostering care for as many children as possible in preference to expensive residential home care.
Representations to the Secretary of State have come not only from sympathetic Members but from organisations as disparate as the Associations of County Councils and Metropolitan Authorities, DIG, and the Health and Handicaps Group of the National Council of Social Services. That body has distinguished representatives from all fields of handicap. It is often very difficult to get agreement among organisations for the handicapped, and when it is the unanimous opinion of so many that a change in the Regulations would assist both them and local authorities to care for these children, the Minister should pay close attention.
The existing Regulations are depriving these children—possibly the most severely disadvantaged members of our society—of the type of care that it is accepted is best for them. The Minister is inhibiting good social work practice. It is no use his saying that he has passed responsibility somewhere down the line, to the

local authorities. He knows that he has ultimate responsibility for all handicapped children. Should he not have greater rather than less responsibility for those children whose natural parents are unwilling or unable to care for them?
I know that the Minister has great compassion. I am primarily appealing not to his compassion but to his common sense. This is no thin end of the wedge. There is no reason for Treasury knees to get jittery. The net cost to public funds will be minimal, and if only a few children are moved out of residential care the public purse may even make a profit.
I do not believe that the Minister's heart is in this Regulation, and if he amends it he will give a most welcome Easter present to many children.

1.4 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Alfred Morris): I am most grateful to the hon. Member for Exeter (Mr. Hannam) for raising this important subject. He is the secretary of the All-Party Disablement Group in this House, and, like the hon. Member for Eccles (Mr. Carter-Jones) is well respected in Parliament for the work he has done for disabled people. I join him in paying sincere tribute to all foster parents for their uniquely personal service to deprived children, and more particularly to foster parents who look after handicapped children.
Homes run by local authorities and voluntary organisations alike meet a great need, but there is substantial evidence, most recently in a report from the Director of Social Services for Kent, that the loving care and affection of a family is incomparably more rewarding for children in need of care. I wanted to begin with this brief word of genuine tribute to foster parents—and especially to those with handicapped children—because I should like it to go out from this House that the Government and Parliament as a whole care deeply for the work they do, and are not unsympathetic to their claims.
There can be few groups who command more public sympathy than handicapped children. The Government have demonstrated their sympathy in practical terms by, for example, having paid a further £5 million to the Rowntree Trust Family Fund since the original £3 million given by the previous Administration. As a


further earnest of our intentions in this field, the new non-contributory invalidity pension of £7·90 per week has now become payable to foster children over the age of 16 who are incapable of work. Moreover, the new mobility allowance of £5 per week can also be paid on behalf of foster children aged 15 or over. The next broad group to be included in the mobility allowance scheme will be children aged 5 to 14.
Both sides will welcome my announcement that it is my intention that the first claims for children who qualify for the mobility allowance will be accepted in the summer of this year. This is the first time any kind of outdoor mobility help has been given to severely disabled children. I shall announce the precise arrangements at the earliest possible date. Meanwhile I know that the All-Party Disablement Group will welcome that announcement with pleasure.
Attendance allowance, at either the lower rate of £7·10 or the higher rate of £10·60, helps over 38,000 children under the age of 16 although, in the past, both we and our predecessors have felt unable to concede that attendance allowance should be payable for foster children. The hon. Member has previously raised the matter in correspondence and at Question Time in the House on 4th November 1975. It may assist the House if I run through the arguments which have informed the attitude of successive Governments on this matter, though before I have finished I shall be responding constructively to the points which have been made.
I must start my summary of the arguments so far advanced by successive Governments by going back to the origins of attendance allowance. As hon. Gentlemen will recall, it was introduced specifically to help those severely disabled people whose care was not already provided for primarily out of public funds. Broadly speaking, this covered both disabled adults and children who were being cared for at home but excluded those who were receiving free in-patient treatment in hospital and those in local authority homes. As a result, the limited resources available were concentrated on those for whom there was no other direct financial provision from public funds, namely, those being cared for in their own homes.
What about those in local authority or voluntary homes? Some disabled people have been placed in voluntary homes by local authorities which have taken over financial responsibility for particular residents in them. It is clear that such people, though not in local authority homes, are having their accommodation provided primarily out of pubic funds. So when the attendance allowance scheme was set up it was decided that they should not be entitled to the allowance, since otherwise there would be provision twice over from public funds for the same contingency.
Foster children were regarded similarly, but they presented a particularly difficult problem. Although they were not in an institution, in so far as the local authorities were meeting fostering costs, their accommodation and boarding-out allowances were being provided primarily out of public funds.
Governments took the view, therefore, that foster children were more closely aligned to children maintained by local authorities in homes rather than to children being cared for in their own families It was decided that attendance allowance should not be paid for them. When I speak of foster children, I am referring to children fostered out by local authorities. Attendance allowance can, of course, already be paid for children fostered privately.
I know that the hon. Gentleman is familiar with the Report prepared by Mr. Peter Mitchell, the research assistant to the All-Party Disablement Group in the House, on the financial aspects of fostering handicapped children. The hon. Member may also be aware that the Report has been carefully studied in my Department and that officials have had some discussion with Peter Mitchell. Briefly, he considers that the reasons for not paying attendance allowance for foster children are vitiated by the fact that such children are eligible for the new mobility allowance and for help from the Family Fund.
In the view of the Government, however, mobility allowance and attendance allowance are quite different benefits payable for quite different contingencies. I have already summarised the arguments for not paying attendance allowance for people whose accommodation and care is


already provided out of public funds. But this is no reason for not paying mobility allowance to such people. Similarly the Family Fund, with objectives very different from those of the Attendance Allowance Board, is a unique way of providing Government help outside the statutory framework. It is so different that no meaningful comparison can be drawn between it and more conventional schemes such as that for the payment of attendance allowance.
The Report argues cogently that refusal to pay attendance allowance for foster children is contrary to the Government's declared policy for a shift away from institutional to community care. As I indicated at the outset of my speech we strongly favour fostering, but we must also ensure that our policy on attendance allowance is broadly consistent as between comparable groups of disabled people.
Peter Mitchell's Report concludes that central Government should pay attendance allowance for children who are fostered under local authority auspices because the present restrictions on local government expenditure prevent local authorities increasing their boarding out allowances. The reply that has so far been made to this is that central Government are, of course, subject to equally stringent control on expenditure at the present time.
This inevitably brings me on to the question of costs generally. The Report estimates that there are no more than 300 foster children in England and Wales for whom attendance allowance would be payable. We would broadly agree with this estimate. The cost at current rates would probably be about £170,000 per annum rising with the increased rates in November this year to about £200,000. It may be argued that, viewed against the expenditure of my Department as a whole, this is a relatively trifling amount. Yet given the severity of our present constraints, choices for further expenditure are always agonising.
Many authorities already make adequate financial provision for foster parents even to the extent of paying a sum equivalent to or greater than the appropriate rate of attendance allowance on top of the normal boarding-out allowances. For example, in Reading, foster

parents are being paid a salary of £136 a month and the London borough of Brent recently advertised a boarding out allowance of up to £35 a week for foster parents for a particularly disturbed teenage girl.
Last autumn my Department's Working Party on Fostering Practice produced a "Guide to Fostering Practice" and, at the same time, it submitted comments and documents to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on topics which had arisen in the course of its deliberations but which were outside its terms of reference. The payment of attendance allowance to foster parents was one such topic and the working party agreed with the principle that foster children should be treated in the same way as other children in the care of local authorities.
As local authorities have complete freedom to fix their own rate of boarding-out allowances, they are able to take a less restricted view of what constitutes handicap than is possible for attendance allowance purposes. They saw this as an added advantage of the present system. I am sure there should be a measure of flexibility, provided of course that it results in adequate financial provision being made for foster parents.
Having related in some detail the reasons for present policy, I can now say that I have been impressed by the eloquent and persuasive case which has been made by the hon. Gentleman and by Peter Mitchell and others of the All-Party Disablement Group, not least by my hon. Friend the Member for Eccles (Mr. Carter-Jones), and this is a matter which clearly merits further consideration and I shall be looking at it again to consider, with the Attendance Allowance Board, [whether the Regulations should be changed. I must, however, enter one caveat. Although many foster parents with handicapped children would be better off if the Regulations were changed to enable attendance allowance to be paid to them, some would not and might conceivably be worse off than at present since some local authorities might wish to take it into account when deciding the level of boarding-out allowance to pay. These are difficulties which we shall have to consider in more detail later.
Meanwhile, I conclude by saying that I am pleased to assure the hon. Gentleman that the door is not closed. I shall


proceed as quickly as possible but the House and the hon. Gentleman will realise that the change cannot be made immediately.

TEXTILE INDUSTRY

1.13 p.m.

Mrs. Ann Taylor: I am glad to have the opportunity to discuss today the serious problem of the loss of jobs in the textile industry. I raise this matter not only out of concern for the future of textiles but because of a recent development in my constituency, namely, the loss of 500 jobs at one company. This most recent development is the culmination of many problems over a long period and is a situation which will not improve unless the Government take more positive action, including the imposition of import controls, for which the industry and many hon. Members have been pressing for some time.
Bolton is one of the towns well known as an important textile area. Although its industrial base has diversified in recent years, textiles are still important, despite the fact that in recent years we have seen closure after closure. What 20 years ago was a labour force of nearly 20,000 has been reduced to just over 7,000. That is the background against which we now learn that there are to be another 500 redundancies in the textile industry in Bolton.
This is obviously a serious blow to the town and something that should make the Government think again about their attitude to this industry. These 500 redundancies stem from the proposed closure of one mill and a substantial cutback in production at another. The closure is particularly serious because this mill, Union Mill, is one that has occupied an important position in its sector of the industry and has received a considerable amount of investment over the past 10 years. This contradicts the myth sometimes perpetuated that the textile industry is completely out of date and without investment. Some mills similar to Union Mill have received a lot of investment and yet they are still facing closure.
Union Mill produces condenser yarns, which is admittedly a difficult part of the

market, as its future prospects are not as good as those for other sectors. The position of this mill has been affected not just by market difficulties but by the serious rise in imports of this yarn over recent years and months. We are now seeing yarn coming into this country from Spain, for example, at prices with which British manufacturers cannot compete. They are prices that in no way reflect recent increases in the cost of raw materials.
The other jobs lost in Bolton are at a weaving mill. Again, the basic cause is competition from imports—competition that the company cannot meet. I hope that the Minister will not tell me today that the company should make a dumping application. Anyone who knows anything about the situation knows that the dumping procedure is woefully inadequate and that the whole burden of proof should be shifted, so that the importer should have to prove that the goods he is bringing into the country are not being dumped, rather than that the British manufacturer should have to do the impossible and obtain evidence from abroad.
The loss of 500 jobs is obviously serious at any time. It is especially serious at the moment, in view of the general level of unemployment in the country as a whole, and in the Northwest and in the textile industry in particular. In the past two years there has been almost a 10 per cent. loss of jobs in the textile and clothing industry. That is far higher than the average for manufacturing industries. In cotton spinning in particular there has been a 20 per cent. loss of jobs in two years. It is this situation about which we have to do something quickly. I mention these figures so that the Minister and the Government will realise just how serious the situation is. It is serious not just because of the loss of jobs but because of the loss of capacity in the industry.
When mills like Union Mill close we are not only losing jobs and throwing people out of work; we are also losing the ability to produce goods, which means that we shall become increasingly dependent on imports. There are two problems facing us. The first is the need for immdiate action to deal with the levels of imports. Although we have to admit that some action has been taken


by the Government, it is by no means adequate to give protection to the industry. We have had controls on yarn from Spain and Portugal. These have been welcomed by many, although not all in the industry, but we have seen that piecemeal measures such as this are in no way adequate to meet the situation and to deal with the basic problems facing us.
An example of the ineffectiveness of piecemeal controls came to my attention today, when I received a letter about the problems of imports from Pakistan that are hitting a company which makes underwear in my constituency. At present, there are goods coming from Pakistan which carry no duty and for which no import licence is required. This means, to quote the letter, that
as one door to the sale of import goods closes another one opens.
We have seen action taken on goods coming from Hong Kong and Portugal, but now Pakistan has stepped in, and goods are coming in cheaply from there.
What we need, and must have, are stricter and reduced quotas, operating immediately. I do not think that the controls have to be across the board, though there are many sectors in all stages of production which need some protection, and the Government should get together with the industry to discuss and determine exactly what is required. It is possible for these controls to be temporary and to be phased out once the world situation improves and world demand picks up, but these controls and import curbs must be introduced now or we shall lose more jobs and more capacity, and in the long run this will be extremely serious for the industry. Although this is a short-term measure, it is essential if the industry is to have a viable future.
The next year will be critical for the industry, because unless there is a return of confidence it will not have a viable future. We have seen a fall in investment over the past year, and unless the industry can be assured that the Government will play their part in ensuring its survival the outlook will be very grim.
What is needed? I think that to deal with the long-term position the Government and the industry must get together and reach the kind of planning agreement

situation about which we have been talking for other industries. Part of the agreement will have to be for the industry to invest more and for the Government to recognise that the industry requires assurances that there will be a limit to the amount of imports allowed into this country, particularly in times of recession, such as now.
The timing is right for the Government to start thinking along these lines now, because later this year negotiations will have to start for a renewal of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement. Before then it is important that the Government give a commitment that they will seek a ceiling on the levels of imports, especially in times of depression, and that some form of regulator will be introduced, because without it there will be no possibility of breaking the cycle that we have seen so often, with the industry being left much smaller after each recession. Only if we start talking about this now and taking action along these lines now shall we retain a viable industry.
I remind the Minister that although we are talking about percentages of unemployment and the total number of jobs lost in this industry, we are in the end talking about human problems and the many family difficulties that are emerging in the North-West because of this situation. We are seeing many men and women in their forties and fifties thrown out of work. Sometimes two people in the same family are affected in this way.
We are also seeing a great depression in the industry and, indeed, something that could almost be called despair. I heard yesterday of a weaver who started work in a mill on a part-time basis at the age of 14, during the First World War. She reminded me that after the war workers in the industry took two wage cuts so that the industry could compete with imports. Since then the workers have tolerated a great deal. They have co-operated with rationalisation and with the rundown of the industry. Indeed, it could be said that they have co-operated too much. Now their loyalty to the industry and the Government is being stretched and it is time that they got their position recognised. It is time the Government acknowledged that this is air extremely important industry—one that the country cannot afford to see depressed


in the way that is happening now, and one which must have some security in the future.
Many workers in the textile industry cannot understand why the car industry gets so much help and textiles appear to get so little. What we need from the Government is a clear statement of how they see the future of this industry, because without that, and without some assurance that the Government wish to see a textile industry survive in this country, the job situation and employment prospects will be severe and grim.
When I was fortunate enough to catch Mr. Speaker's eye in the debate on the Gracious Speech last year I said that there must be an early introduction of selective import controls to help the textile industry before it was too late. That was last November. We have now seen that it is too late for 500 people in my constituency. I hope that the Government will now not just think about this problem—not just think about the possibility of introducing import controls at some time in the future—but will wake up to the fact that they have to introduce import controls if the industry is to be protected, and will do it sooner rather than later. Unless that action is taken soon we shall not save the jobs remaining in the industry and we shall not see it survive as a viable unit.
It is now up to the Government to take action. It is up to them to give confidence to the industry. It is up to them to work out the industry's future, in conjunction with the management and the work force. There has been a great deal of co-operation between both sides of the industry about the future. The only people who do not seem to be persuaded of the necessity of a policy of this kind are the Government. I hope that with the experience that I have outlined, and the knowledge of the serious blow that Bolton and the textile industry have suffered, the Government will reconsider their position and take immediate action to give the industry the confidence that is needed to ensure that it can survive, that its jobs will remain, and that it has a future in this country.

1.27 p.m.

Mr. Charles Fletcher-Cooke: Many of my constituents work, or used

to work, in the mills to which the hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mrs. Taylor) referred, and they and I are grateful to her for raising this subject today.
All of us, and particularly spokesmen for the Government, have over the last two years or more urged that the industrial base of this country be broadened and that its size be restored to something of what it used to be. But words do not serve to prevent the narrowing and erosion of our industrial base, and nothing seems to be done to prevent it from happening.
The textile industry is a classic example of where words are one thing but deeds are another. I do not wish to make a party point here because successive Governments have indulged in this double talk, and successive Governments have been not so much themselves to blame as that they, or at least one Department of them, have been in the grip of a bureaucracy that does not understand the textile industry and in a sense finds it a nuisance.
From time to time we are told that we are to get action on this vexed question of import quotas. This is not action such as a 20 per cent. cut "across the board" because, although I supported that, I realise that that is what is called "unrealistic". But we have been told that the quotas, at least on some selected lines, will be reduced. That at any rate has been the impression that has been given. But the outcome is never a reduction in any of these imports. The answer is always "The amount by which these quotas would have been increased has been slightly cut. The quotas will still be increased but not by as much as you might otherwise have thought."
So far that seems to have been the only result of all the international agreements, the Multi-Fibre Arrangement, the EEC agreements and all the other manifold agreements dealing with the international textile trade, concerning the victim in the United Kingdom. The only reduction is in anticipated enlargement of the quotas. There is no absolute cut at all. It is for an absolute reduction that I join the hon. Member for Bolton, West in asking the Government to look at the matter seriously and urgently again, if this particular industrial base is not to be eroded beyond repair.
This is a difficult problem but it is an entirely comprehensible problem. The trouble with the textile industry is well known. It is not that it is not efficient. It is not that it has bad designers. It is simply the question of imports. Everyone knows that. Everyone knows that what the industry is asking for is not Government money—which comes as a nice surprise these days—but a reasonable standard of protection against imports which, if not technically dumped, are not priced in a fair way in relation to fair competition. No one who knows anything about the industry can doubt that.
When the industry was lectured, as it was, in a didactic tone by a distinguished civil servant at Harrogate the other day, about how it must invest more and go in for new designs, and generally pull up its socks, that was adding insult to injury. Everyone knows that ever since the 1959 Act it has been those parts of the industry that have invested most and that have pushed out the boat concerning new enterprises that are the first to be clobbered, because their capital costs are higher than the old-fashioned weaving shed with perhaps eight old Lancashire looms. It is those that really try to do their duty by modernising and introducing new designs, which is all very expensive, that are often the first to go. They are the first to go because their capital expenses are too much and they have over-traded.
Therefore, may we have less didacticism to the industry and may we have a little help, or, rather, a lot of help, in ensuring that the general level of imports goes down next year and not up? Only the Government can achieve that.
I am afraid that the Minister of State who is at present on the Government Front Bench is not to blame. It is not his Department. It is the Secretary of State for Trade. We have a new Secretary of State for Trade, and I hope that the message will go from the hon. Gentleman to the new Secretary of State, loud and clear, that whatever the Secretary of State for Industry may wish and whatever his civil servants may wish, it is only the Department of the Secretary of State for Trade that can take us out of our trouble.

1.34 p.m.

Mr. Mike Noble: I first congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Mrs. Taylor) on again taking an opportunity to raise in this Chamber the problems of the textile industry. I think that on the days before every recess since the General Election of October 1974 we have managed a debate or secured some kind of action from the Government, albeit too little, to assist the textile industry.
I welcome the presence in the Chamber of my hon. Friends the Members for Bury and Radcliffe (Mr. White) and for Chorley (Mr. Rodgers), both of whom have been very prominent in the campaign waged in the Chamber to secure assistance for the industry. I also welcome the presence of my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Department of Industry, and I trust that he will report those comments that we make that are more appropriate for other Departments to his right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for Trade, the Secretary of State for Employment and, indeed, the Prime Minister—who in answer to a Question only yesterday said that he was very much aware of the problems of the textile industry. May I, through my hon. Friend the Minister of State, assure all my right hon. Friends that they will continue to be aware, and become increasingly aware, of these problems, until we get the kind of action that we are seeking.
I must also comment on the remarks of the hon. and learned Member for Darwen (Mr. Fletcher-Cooke). Certainly the stance that he has taken on behalf of the textile industry is welcomed on the Government side of the House, but it is in grave contrast to the official point of view of the Conservative Party, which is totally committed against import controls. We welcome the hon. and learned Gentleman's support on that matter.
I wish to deal with two points that have been covered, in part, by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West—the difficulties caused by imports, and the case for Government intervention in the industry.
My hon. Friend dealt very adequately with the statistics of the present situation and the effect on the industry of continuing rising levels of imports, and particularly the effect on employment. We


must accept that the Government have taken some action. We have secured some restrictions on imports of Greek and Turkish yarns, and on yarn from Spain and Portugal. What is perhaps more important is that the Govenment have finalised a whole range of agreements through the Multi-Fibre Arrangement, which control the import of textiles from the vast majority of sources.
The fact is, however, that the MFA is similar to a dam. It has been built with great ingenuity, skill and patience, but, unfortunately, the level of the dam is about 3 ft. below the level of the water. Imports continue to come in. We need some marginal improvement there. In conversation with a leading trade unionist in the industry only this morning, I was assured that a marginal improvement under the MFA could have a significant effect on the industy.
Then there is concern about what will happen after 1977 when the present arrangements expire. What are the weaknesses of the MFA? First, we must face the fact that the wrong base year was concluded in the negotiations. Restrictions are based on 1974, which was the year of the highest level of imports. If one starts restricting from the peak of a mountain, there will be very little effect from such an arrangement. I suggest that we should be putting pressure on the EEC to deal with this question of the base year. It is quite ridiculous that Britain, which among all the members of the Common Market is the most affected by imports, should not be allowed to have a bigger say in the question of which year is selected.
The other weakness is that the MFA allows, through the burden-sharing arrangement, a ½ per cent. growth factor in imports. That would be fine if the Minister could give an assurance today that the economy would grow by, say, 3 per cent. or 4 per cent., so that given a ½ per cent. growth in imports, at least the domestic industry would be increasing its share of the market. But as long as we have the present deflationary attitude on the part of the Government, we shall not secure a bigger share, and the ½ per cent. growth factor continues to be a stick with which the industry is beaten. The burden-sharing arrangement means that future burdens may be shared

but past burdens borne by our industry continue to remain a very depressing factor on textiles. We shall have to adopt a very firm stance in negotiations in the post-1977 situation if the industry is to be rescued at all.
With regard to dumping, I welcome the fact that the Department of Trade now seems to be operating very swiftly on applications. I note that with leather-coated fabrics this has been the case. I hope that it will continue.
There are other points that need to be made. We still need a more effective policy on marks of origin. It is insufficient to have a mark of origin that says "Made in the United Kingdom" when perhaps the buttons have been sewn on a shirt here and the rest of the shirt has been made up elsewhere, or when the cloth was made elsewhere. We need some kind of mark that will indicate clearly what processes have been carried out in this country so that the vast number of people who wish to buy British can be assured that they are buying an entirely British-made commodity.
We need to be thinking very carefully at this stage about attaching some kind of labour code to the GATT. I come back to the point I made in the debate on international trade. It is quite futile to talk about fair competition when workers in this country have collective bargaining and social security benefits and the industry is competing with overseas industries in which the workers have none of those benefits. As Socialists, we should be concerned not simply with fair trade as understood in GATT—which, in my opinion, is in urgent need of being updated—but with a definition of fair trade which spreads the benefits of trade with the Third World back to workers in this country and not to the multinationals in Japan and the United States.
Before turning to the problems which are more related to the Department of Industry, may I make two other points? We must recognise that the Government's decision to press for a more effective public purchasing policy in relation to British textiles is beginning to show effects. The Lancashire County Council recently turned down a tender for uniforms and accepted a slightly higher tender for uniforms which were made in this country. We are having some effect


on the Department of Health and Social Security, and I congratulate the Government on that aspect of policy, but we need to put far more pressure on private retail outlets in this country to make sure that they buy British, and the way to do this is to have an effective origin marking system.
I now turn to problems which are more appropriate to the Department of Industry. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West mentioned the heavy concentration of the cotton textile industry in the North-West and the social effects of a rundown in that industry. By and large, production is concentrated in the "big four"—Courtaulds, Tootalls, Carrington Viyella and Coates Paton. This fact has enormous significance for regional policy.
If we accept that in Nelson and Colne 40 per cent. of employment is in the textile industry and that in my constituency 51 per cent. is in textiles and footwear, we can see the dangers of allowing a rundown in either of these industries in terms of employment and the social side effects. Where there are whole families working in an individual mill, which is the case with Tootalls in Bolton, the income effects of redundancy do not compare with the effects in other parts of the country.
There is the further important effect of an ageing labour force. My hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Mr. Jones) said that when an industry closes, older workers are cast into an industrial graveyard—a graphic description but true. The employment alternatives are restricted. Given this situation, the Government need to look carefully at the new tools of industrial and economic policy which were fashioned last year through the Industry Act. The Government should be looking at the textile industry as one place where a planning agreement should be made because by this means some of the gaps which appear in industry could be plugged; but even more important, by such a means those parts of the industry which remain could be given some degree of confidence to continue.
I should like to know what plans the Department of Industry has to extend the planning agreement system in the textile industry. Last October, on the day when the Labour Party Conference ended,

I addressed a meeting of the Textile Institute in Blackburn, consisting mainly of people in middle management. I talked to them about our new industrial policy and expressed my view on how it should be extended towards the textile industry. They completely endorsed the need for Government intervention in this way.
May I comment on the agreement which has been waged for 18 months, and in some cases for much longer? This campaign, which started in the first week after the October election, has had some marginal success. We have achieved the restrictions that I have mentioned. Certainly the textile industry has been driven to the forefront of the affairs of the Department of Trade, as was stated recently by the Under-Secretary. I assure the Minister that this campaign will continue. I assure him that the fact that we have a new Secretary of State at the Department and that we had to persuade him to our way of thinking does not dismay us at all and that we shall continue to bloody his shins, as we did his predecessor's until we achieve some success.

1.45 p.m.

The Minister of State, Department of Industry (Mr. Gerald Kaufman): My hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale (Mr. Noble) referred to the remarkable way in which all my hon. Friends who sit for North-Western constituencies involved in the problems of the textile, clothing and footwear industries have made their presence felt ever since they were elected.
As my hon. Friend has pointed out, the presence in the Chamber today not only of himself but of my hon. Friends the Members for Bolton, West (Mrs. Taylor), Bury and Radcliffe (Mr. White) and Chorley (Mr. Rodgers) shows that the eve of Easter is not an occasion which will in any way prevent them from pressing their campaign. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West, in an extremely lucid and effective speech, showed that her constituents could not hope for a better spokesman on behalf of their interests than they have in her. My hon. Friend knows me too well to think that I would ever criticise her, but I admit that I felt a certain disappointment at the fact that she did not feel able to acknowledge a little more generously the actions mat the Government have taken


to assist the textile industry in the past 18 months. However, my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale made up for that.
As a Lancashire Member, I can understand the concern which hon. Members have expressed about the loss of jobs in the textile industry. I think they are quite right to speak out, regardless of the fact that their party is in power, because they know very well that while it is open to them to criticise their own Government, as they never fail to do, they can hope for more from the present Government than they could from our predecessors—and, indeed, a great deal more has been done.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West referred to the substantial aid that the Government have given to the motor car industry. I am not grumbling at her for doing so, but I would point out that the Chrysler rescue was conditional upon declaring redundant one-third of the work force. I do not know that anybody would be happy if Government assistance were made available—except in the extreme circumstances in which we assisted Chrysler—with that kind of condition attached.

Mr. George Rodgers: Mr. George Rodgers (Chorley) rose—

Mr. Kaufman: I do not think I ought to give way. I am aware of my hon. Friend's concern in this matter and the wonderful job that he has done, but I am under a time limit and I had better respond to what my hon. Friends have said.
I assure my hon. Friends that the concern they have expressed, and which I know they will continue to express until they get action that fully satisfies them, is shared and will continue to be shared by the Government. I know they will agree that no Government have done more, both in terms of our industrial policy and in the extensive protection that we have given the industry. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary suggested, in his recent speech to the annual luncheon of the British Textile Confederation, that the agreements negotiated under the GATT Multi-Fibre Arrangement and the actions we took under the EEC's agreements with its associated States have

given the industry, as a whole, greater protection than it has ever had before. Listening to some critics of the Government—though the criticism has not been as vocal as in some other circles—one gained the impression that there was no protection at all for the industry against low-cost imports. My hon. Friends certainly know that that is not so.
The Lancashire industry has the continuation of its restraints on imports of cotton yarn from its traditional suppliers and from Turkey or Greece. Through our action last December it now has restraints on imports of cotton yarn and man-made fibre cloth from Portugal and cotton yarn from Spain. In addition under the agreements concluded under the GATT Multi-Fibre Arrangement, we have extended the existing restraints on woven cotton and polyester-fabric and garments to other countries which have emerged as suppliers to the United Kingdom market.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West referred with some concern to the damage that she feared might eventuate from imports from Pakistan. I assure her that imports of knitwear require an import licence, and duty must also be paid under the United Kingdom tariff. My right hon. Friends the former Secretary of State for Trade and the new Secretary of State for Trade will note what has been said by all my hon. Friends and will realise the seriousness of their threats.
My right hon. Friend the then Secretary of State for Trade announced on 10th March restraints on the import of woollen suits from the Eastern bloc. The Government have also taken effective action against the famous, or infamous, £4·80 suits, none of which, to our knowledge, has been imported. It is perhaps appropriate to refer here to the comments made by my hon. Friends about the dumping of suits and dumping generally. My right hon. and hon. Friends in the Department of Trade are most anxious to make effective use of the anti-dumping legislation. In this they have my Department's full support and backing. Dumping is an emotional and complex subject and I shall do what my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale asked and ensure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade is made aware of the criticisms that have been made.
To return to imports, we have ensured that under the multi-fibre bilateral agreements there is a wide coverage, in terms of both products and countries, on imports of knitwear. Under these same agreements clothing has had the coverage of its existing restraints widened substantially to include all fibres.
These MFA restraints cover imports from India, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Macao, Malaysia, South Korea, Japan and Brazil. Restraints were imposed on Taiwan. But these restraints are not all. Negotiations for further restraints under the MFA have begun with Colombia, Mexico, Yugoslavia and Romania, and are planned with Egypt, Thailand and possible other Eastern bloc countries.
All these restraints are of importance not only to the individual sectors but to the industry as a whole, and to other supplying industries like the textile machinery industry, part of which is, I believe, located in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West. Because of the increasing interdependence of sectors in the industry, a restraint or, for example, knitwear helps the knitters and their yarn suppliers in Lancashire and the man-made fibre industry.
I emphasise to the the House that the coverage of import restraints for the industry as a whole has never been so extensive. As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer said in his Budget speech, we are prepared to consider further selective import controls where they are justified. Indeed, in the EEC we are at present negotiating with Portugal on restraints on other textile imports. Furthermore, as a result of surveillance licensing, which we instituted last April and extended in September to made-ups, we are now negotiating in Brussels restraints on two further products from two Far Eastern suppliers.
My hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale was critical of the value of all these restraints because their levels are too high. Certainly, if the Multi-Fibre Arrangement had been negotiated in 1975 the minimum growth rate might well have been lower than 6 per cent. But 1975 was the year of a major recession in the textile cycle whose effects were compounded by general recession and inflation throughout the developed countries. I am confident that, once demand

recovers, these restraints will bite and, indeed, we have been told already of orders switched to British manufacturers because of them. I hope that the industry will take full advantage of the restraints. I regret to say that some hon. Members have complained of difficulties in getting some yarns and fabrics from the United Kingdom industry.
My hon. Friends referred—though not over-critically—to the Government's decision to refuse the industry's request to cut imports across the board to a level of 20 per cent. below that of 1974. The hon. and learned Member for Darwen (Mr. Fletcher-Cooke) also referred to that. This was done only after the most careful consideration. Whether hon. Members like it or not, the United Kingdom is a major trading nation—and our balance of payments position demands that we encourage growth in trade. An import cut would inevitably have touched off retaliation, to the loss not only of the textile industry's own exports of £1,093 million in 1975 but to other industries' exports, too. Moreover, in 1975 the country as a whole actually increased its share of world trade at a time when world trade was shrinking.
It is no comfort, but I must tell the House that other textile industries in Europe suffered equally if not worse than our own industry in terms of both employment and profits. From the latest EEC figures available to us, namely, for the period 1971 to 1974, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Ireland all lost more employees than did the United Kingdom.
In terms of output, the index of industrial production snowed a greater fall for the OECD European countries than for the United Kingdom. Output in the United States and Japan also fell more than it did in the United Kingdom. Despite the losses made, for example, by our man-made fibre producers, greater losses were made in Holland, France and Italy.
I quote those figures not out of complacency and not because I like to think that workers in other countries are being damaged, but so that my hon. Friends can see the serious problems—to which they will rightly continue to draw attention—in that context and in proportion. Hard-pressed as was the United Kingdom industry, it did not suffer as badly as did


other European countries which similarly did not resort to import cuts.
When my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State met the British Textile Confederation earlier this month, he was encouraged by its view that there were now signs that the upturn both in the world economy and in textiles had begun. The United States textile industry has moved back to over 90 per cent. capacity working in three months. There are signs that West Germany and Japan are also on the move.
Within our own industry there is some evidence of marginal improvement. In Lancashire the daily rate of yarn and woven cloth production in January showed an improvement over the third and fourth quarters of 1975. Although there was a slight fallback in February, I understand that the industry is more encouraged by the present level of orders and deliveries. In February 1976 in Lancashire spinning, the Yorkshire wool industry, the hosiery industry and the carpet industry there was a small increase in employment leading to a marginal increase for textiles as a whole. Clothing unemployment has fallen marginally. Overtime working increased in most sectors in February 1976.
I am not saying that the end of what I know has been a long and harrowing road is in sight, but I think that we may have turned the corner. There is, therefore, before us the prospect of export-led growth. I am glad to note that, with the exception of wool, all our exports, from man-made fibres to clothing, increased in January and February this year by comparison with last year. The percentage increases ranged from 5 per cent. to 30 per cent. I very much welcome this increase, but it does not make me feel complacent. Indeed, one of the most dangerous times for employment is the beginning of the upturn when the cash flow problems of firms can be at their most acute. We recognise this problem and, as the House will be aware, the banks and finance houses have been asked to ensure that any expansion of their business is directed to the needs of manufacturing industry.
Our industrial policies have tried to strengthen the industry and to contain the loss of jobs. In the short term, of cardinal importance is the temporary

employment subsidy. Since this imaginative policy was announced, there have been 527 applications by industries for the subsidy. Of these applications, 174 were from firms in the textile and clothing industries—by far the largest take-up of all industries of the scheme. Obviously I welcome their use of the scheme which will enable them both to keep their employees and the capacity necessary to take advantage of the upturn when it comes.
We have also strongly supported investment by the industry to modernise and extend its capacity. To my knowledge, no viable textile firm has yet said to us that it cannot go ahead with an investment programme because we have refused it assistance. Indeed, I must say frankly that I am disappointed at the small response the industry has made to my right hon. Friend's very foresighted accelerated projects scheme.
Despite the constraints on public expenditure, we have felt it vital to increase the amount of Government assistance available under this scheme for investment in planned projects which industry has had to shelve or postpone. This scheme now applies to investment or modernisation projects with a capital cost normally, though not invariably, exceeding £500,000. So it ought to be of considerable attraction to the textile industry. Even if investment now in the textile industry may not be an instant addition to total employment in the industry, it remains vital in order to assure continued employment.
I assure the House that the Government are concerned about the loss of jobs in the textile industry. In the short term, we have taken action through the temporary employment subsidy and through an extensive network of import controls to reduce as much as possible the impact of the world-wide trade recession on the industry. We remain ready to introduce further import restraints where these are justifiable. In the medium term, we intend through the industrial strategy to reverse the country's industrial decline.
We have made a start, and the response from the industry has been encouraging. Its highly successful conference last week on the future for British textiles confirms everyone's readiness to play his full part in this vital work. I assure my hon. Friends that, with their continued and


unrelenting pressure, the Government will play their part, too.

GREEN HOWARDS (BAND PROPERTY)

2.3 p.m.

Sir Timothy Kitson: I am grateful for the opportunity of raising on the Adjournment the problem of compensation for the Green Howards Regiment.
The background history of this matter is that at three o'clock in the morning of 11th June 1974 the equipment, musical instruments, badges and bandsmen's property were blown up on Ministry of Defence property at Strensall, near York. Fortunately, no one was injured in the explosion. However, all the instruments, property, music of the band and personal effects of the bandsmen were destroyed.
The Green Howards Regiment, whose headquarters in Richmond are in my constituency, was founded in 1688. For nearly 300 years it has had a remarkable record of service. Indeed, few infantry regiments have been awarded 18 Victoria Crosses and three George Crosses—the record of the Green Howards. The main recruiting for the regiment is done in the North Riding and Cleveland County, and for this reason my colleague the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bottomley), my hon. Friend the Member for Cleveland and Whitby (Mr. Brittan) and the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Wainwright) support me in this matter. Therefore, I am supported by members of all three major political parties.
The regiment is in Northern Ireland on its sixth tour of duty there. Only this Monday headlines in the Evening Gazette demonstrated once again the good work of the Green Howards:
The Howards wound three in Border battle; 15-minute gun battle in Northern Ireland ".
The first battalion, except the band, was serving in Northern Ireland in June 1975, and it was decided that the band should be put back into playing order as a matter of the greatest urgency, for a number of reasons. First, a lengthy period of inactivity would have been bad for the morale of the band. The regiment's pride demanded that a cowardly attack was not to be seen as an in-

convenience to the regiment. Also, the band had promised to undertake a number of commitments, and it wanted to meet those engagements.
Because of the support of numerous people, agencies and other units, the band continued its programme within five days of the explosion, using borrowed instruments and hastily tailored uniforms. Within a week of the explosion the regiment ordered new instruments and scarlet uniforms. At this stage it was felt that just under £10,000 would be received in insurance money and the regiment was fairly confident that, as the explosion had occurred on War Department property, the Government would give it some assistance.
The actual cost of replacing the equipment was just over £30,000. There was no option other than to buy new instruments and uniforms. Second-hand instruments would have taken months or even years to acquire, and second-hand uniforms do not exist. The band property losses for instruments, uniforms and music amounted to £23,700. Insurance covered £9,100, and an appeal fund gave £1,400. The compensation from the Ministry of Defence on personal effects for the bandsmen was £2,000, the share of insurance on instruments was £900, and a grant from the Army Benevolent Fund amounted to £2,100. The amount for which the bandsmen were out of pocket to cover personal effects was £780.
The regiment is in debt to the tune of £9,780, and, although the Ministry of Defence has arranged for an interest-free loan, it will have to be repaid later, starting in 1978. Surely one would think that the Ministry of Defence could have assisted the regiment and paid for the outstanding amounts.
At the time of the explosion the insurance coverage was done through the military insurers, Wilson and Company, and it appears that it was impossible for the regiment to obtain insurance at replacement value because this sort of cover was not available in 1974. However, owing to the development of terrorist attacks on regiments, the shape of military insurance policies has been changed to ensure that this situation could not arise again.
I should like to refer to a letter written on 7th April to Brigadier John Oldfield,


Colonel of the Green Howards, by a director of Wilson and Company:
One point which may perhaps have some bearing on this is the situation of the Band at the time of the incident. The Band was in mid-tour, and had a series of engagements it had to fulfil. The Band therefore was forced into a situation of having to re-equip itself in the minimum possible time. There was no other course open to the Band other than to buy a complete set of new instruments.
Turning now to the situation which applied to the Band insurance pre-June 1974. The basis of the insurance was that each instrument should be insured for such a figure as would enable replacements by a reconditioned similar instrument. In the event of the loss of one instrument this is a feasible proposition, but as I am sure you are well aware, it would be quite impossible to produce, at short notice, a complete Bandsworth of reconditioned instruments.
Therefore, at the time the band was not in a position to obtain the full cover necessary for replacement in the circumstances in which it was placed.
That, I am sure, clarifies the dilemma of the regiment, and all should agree that it was proper that it took steps for immediate re-equipment in June 1974. Lord Tranmire, who served with the regiment, has raised this subject in the House of Lords and has been supported by a number of their Lordships on both the Government and Opposition Benches.
I went with the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough and my hon. Friend the Member for Cleveland and Whitby to see the Secretary of State in December last year. I felt that at that time he listened sympathetically to our comments and our arguments, but regrettably the money has not been produced by the Civil Service Department. I believe the Department has felt that, if the full compensation were paid to the regiment, a precedent would be established which might affect the Government's future responsibility.
I do not, however, accept this argument, partly because the military insurers have made some alterations to their policies to cover this situation, and, secondly, because other regiments could easily be circularised by the Ministry of Defence and informed of the difficulties encountered by the Green Howards Regiment, and advised to see that their insurance cover is fully satisfactory.
I honestly believe that, even if the Minister in his reply today fails to give

us a satisfactory answer, and states that full compensation cannot be paid, I and some of my colleagues will refer the matter to the Prime Minister, in view of the considerable difficulties that the regiment will have to face if the money is not forthcoming.
Surely, with the outstanding record of service of the Green Howards Regiment, we owe it to the regiment to see that this cowardly attack at dead of night by a group of terrorists does not in any way leave an embarrassing financial position or undermine the morale of the officers and troops, who are yet again serving in Northern Ireland.

2.11 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Bottomley: It affords me pleasure to give support to the proposition of the hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Sir T. Kitson) that full compensation should be paid to the regimental band of the Green Howards. As he said a moment ago, the headquarters of the Green Howards Regiment is in his constituency. Likewise, I can claim that the Green Howards Regiment has had a long association with Middlesbrough. As far back as 1944 the town gave the Freedom of Middlesbrough to the regiment.
I am pleased to say that on 26th June next the band will exercise its right to have a ceremonial march through Middlesbrough. I know that many of my constituents have been very proud to serve in the regiment.
As the hon. Gentleman has said, in 1974, as a result of terrorist action, the regiment suffered losses. The band lost its instruments and equipment. These were replaced, as explained by the hon. Gentleman, but, for the reasons already given, they were not fully covered under the insurance. It is understandable that the instruments and equipment should have been under-insured. Nobody could ever anticipate that there would be a complete loss at one fell swoop. Nevertheless, that happened.
As a result of the representations made to the Secretary of State for Defence, I am very glad to say that he received us sympathetically and, I think, genuinely wanted to help the regiment. Indeed, when he found that he had not the powers within his own Department, he went to the Civil Service Department


and asked for its help. The Department was able to go some part of the way in rendering assistance, saying that, in the case of the loss of personal effects suffered by bandsmen, they would be compensated, and that they would be compensated also for the loss of their individual instruments. But that is not enough.
The Green Howards regimental band has played a big part in helping to build up the reputation of the regiment in this country and in other parts of the world. The regiment is renowned for its bravery and gallant action not only in the past but also at the present time in Northern Ireland.
I suggest to the Under-Secretary of State that, if he cannot accept today that his Department should pay full and adequate compensation in order that the band may be fully replenished, he should get his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to appeal to the Prime Minister. After all, the Prime Minister was once Home Secretary and had the experience first-hand of seeing the Green Howards in action. It should be possible for the Prime Minister, in his rôle as the First Lord of the Treasury, to be more forthcoming than has so far been the case.
I support the view that there is not likely to be a case of this kind again, because nobody will under-insure. If that is so, I do not think there should be any repercussions. I therefore ask my hon. Friend to convey to his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State the plea that full compensation be paid to the band of the Green Howard Regiment.

2.16 p.m.

Mr. Leon Brittan: As Member of Parliament for a constituency in which the Green Howards recruit extensively, I fully support what has been said so far in the debate. I do so the more for having had the privilege of visiting the Green Howards when they were serving in South Armagh last year.
The Green Howards enjoy a unique place in the hearts of the people of Cleveland and of North Yorkshire, and the band of the regiment occupies a very special place. It has given pleasure to thousands. It has provided a showcase for the regiment, and the pride in it has contributed greatly to the morale of the

regiment. If the band and the regiment are felt to have been treated shabbily by the Government, it will create a feeling of bitterness throughout Cleveland and North Yorkshire which will last a very long time, which I am sure the Government do not wish to see—all the more so as today the regiment is serving for the sixth time in Northern Ireland, in the most arduous conditions, with great courage.
In those circumstances, to approach this problem with the cheese-paring and misguided niggardliness of a second-rate accountants' clerk could bring shame and disrepute on the Government and do far more harm to the Government than could ever be done to the regiment or to the band.
The moral claim, I suggest, is unassailable, and the attempts to refute it so far are riddled with illogicalities and inaccuracies. At the time the incident occurred, it simply was not possible to insure the band equipment for replacement value, as my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Sir T. Kitson) has conclusively shown. There was a small element of under-insurance of the existing use value, but it was quite impossible to insure for replacement value. Therefore, there can be no danger whatsoever of a precedent being established. There is nothing to fear in that direction.
I also lay stress on the fact that, at the time the incident occurred, the band was on a tour of duty. The incident occurred on Ministry of Defence property. The band was entitled, in those circumstances, to expect a more generous attitude from the Government. If it had occurred in Northern Ireland, there is no question but that compensation would have been payable and would have been paid.
In case the Government are still worried about the danger of a precedent being established, I remind them that they have themselves established a precedent by compensating the bandsmen, perfectly properly, but not sufficiently. I ask the Government to reconsider the matter and to show a more imaginative approach to a problem which cannot recur, and a more generous attitude to a regiment which is even now setting an example of fortitude and courage of which we should all be proud.

2.19 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Army (Mr. Robert C. Brown): The hon. Members for Richmond, Yorks (Sir T. Kitson), and Cleveland and Whitby (Mr. Brittan) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bottomley) have been pursuing this question for some time now. I understand their concern on behalf of their constituents and I understand their constituents' feeling that they are entitled to help.
Before going into the disputed area, I should like briefly to reiterate the facts of the case. As a fellow North Country man I have the greatest possible sympathy with this famous regiment or band. The debate arises as the result of a terrorist attack that has already been mentioned. I shall therefore not need to go into the details of that matter.
Following the explosion, the regiment made a claim on its insurers, and received £9,176. Since the total cost of replacement of the lost items was considerably more than that sum—it was about £30,000 at new prices—the regiment then asked my Department for the difference—about £21,000. After the claim had been considered, compensation of about £2,500 was paid from public funds to individual bandsmen, but my Department was not able to meet any part of the loss sustained by the band itself. The hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks, the hon. Member for Cleveland and Whitby and my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough have made various representations on behalf of the regiment, and I pay tribute to all three of them, because no constituency Members could have worked harder on a case. But since my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has been unable to offer any further compensation, the matter is now being raised here.
I should, perhaps, explain two points that form an important part of the background to this case. First, although the men forming a regimental band are, of course, serving soldiers on an authorised establishment, and although some financial help is provided from public funds to establish and maintain the band's instruments and equipment, these are the property of the regiment and not of the Army as a whole. It is the regiment that

is primarily responsible for their maintenance.
The annual grant from public funds is modest by any standards—between £310 and £440—and the rest of the money needed for the band's instruments and equipment is found privately by the regiment. Some of it comes from the proceeds of private engagements, concerts, recordings, and so on, undertaken by the band. Nearly all the income from such engagements, after expenses have been met, is shared between the bandmaster, the bandsmen and the regiment's bank fund. Only a very small percentage goes back to public funds. Should the band's instruments or equipment need replacing, the cost must be borne by the regiment. These items do not, therefore, come into the same category as ordinary military stores and equipment, which are provided and maintained at public expense.
It is, therefore, the responsibility of the regiment, and in its own interests, to see that the affairs of the band are properly conducted in every way, and that there is adequate insurance.
The second point concerns the question of compensation. Since this subject gives rise to a great deal of misunderstanding, I should explain that, in broad terms, my Department may pay compensation in two ways only—either as common law damages or under the Department's regulations.
Common law damages are paid to a claimant when my Department has, by negligence, caused loss, injury or damage to a third party and is legally liable to pay compensation. Should a claimant be dissatisfied with my Department's handling of the claim, he is entitled to commence proceedings and to ask a court to hear his case. It was suggested to my right hon. Friend by the hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks, that my Department might have some legal liability for the loss that we are now considering, because it took place on premises owned and protected by the Ministry. This suggestion was not pursued and, given the circumstances of the loss, I find it hard to believe that a court would hold my Department legally liable to meet the regiment's claim. Despite all that the hon. Member for Cleveland and Whitby said about "second-rate accountants'


clerks", I assure the House that this case has not been dealt with at that level at all.
I want now to deal with the issue of compensation payable under the Regulations. There are many Regulations governing the activities and entitlement of Service men and civilian employees of my Department. One includes provision for the payment of compensation to officers and soldiers who lose personal possessions in specified circumstances, subject to certain conditions that are clearly laid down. It was under this particular Regulation that the regiment's claim was made and considered by my Department.
Unfortunately, the band's claim did not fulfil two of the basic requirements, which are that the loss must be due to the exigencies of the Service, as defined in the Regulations, and that compensation cannot be obtained under an insurance policy or elsewhere. We have already seen that the band obtained some compensation from its insurers, and terrorist activity is not solely an exigency of the Service as defined in the Regulation in question. Indeed, since the majority of terrorist attacks are against civilian targets, it would be difficult to argue that they are an exigency of military service.
Furthermore, bands are specially mentioned. The attention of band committees is specifically drawn to the need to effect adequate insurance of their property to protect themselves from the high cost of replacement in the event of loss and /or damage. A similar warning is given in my Department's Instructions for Bands. As I shall show in a moment, the regiment, unfortunately, failed to take this simple and sensible step, and it now seeks to obtain assistance from public funds to make up for its omission.
In spite of the fact that the claim did not fulfil the conditions laid down in the Regulations, my Department was able, as a special case, to pay sums totalling nearly £2,500 to individual bandsmen who had lost private instilments and other possessions. Some of the soldiers' private musical instruments were covered, partly at any rate, by the band's insurance policy, but nevertheless it was decided that, as good employers, it would be reasonable for us to pay the amounts that

I have mentioned. The compensation paid was based, as is usual, on the estimated second-hand value of the items at the time of their loss. It was not assessed on the cost of replacement by new items.
I am sure that the House will recognise that in making these payments my Department was acting in a generous manner. It is a tragic fact that terrorist attacks are becoming a feature of life in England, and when injury or death is caused thereby a claim may be made under the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme. There is, however, no corresponding provision for paying compensation from public funds for damage to property, as I believe there is in Northern Ireland. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has been asked in this House on more than one occasion to introduce a scheme for such compensation to be paid from public funds, but he has declined to do so, since the risk can be covered by insurance, and the prudent owner should insure his own property. Nevertheless, as I have said, we thought, as good employers, that the individual soldiers should receive something towards their losses, but we were unable to extend this gesture as far as paying compensation to the regiment for the uninsured part of its loss.

Sir T. Kitson: The Minister must surely agree that in the case of a regiment with this number of years' service to the country, it would be an appalling state of affairs if it had to take legal action against the Minister of Defence to establish its claim. As the Department has agreed in principle to make a contribution, and as the regiment has no other money—other than going back to the people of the North Riding and Cleveland with a general appeal, bearing in mind that it had an appeal in 1971 to raise £65,000 and that to go back with another appeal to the local people would seem to be very unfair—could not the Department be generous and make the final payment of a further £10,000?

Mr. Brown: That sounds very easy and very appealing, but I hope that before I finish my speech hon. Members will understand the very much wider implications. It is no good saying that we are not setting a precedent.

Mr. Brittan: Nonsense.

Mr. Brown: It is no good the hon. Gentleman saying "Nonsense". Is he suggesting that the Government should accept the insurance liability of all the citizens of this country?

Mr. Brittan: This is a regiment.

Mr. Brown: But broader issues are also involved.
On behalf of the regiment it has been argued that at the time of the loss the band could not obtain insurance to cover the cost of replacing the lost items with new ones, although what is now termed "new for old" insurance has since become available. I am not quite sure why it is considered that this is a good reason for asking for compensation from public funds, but the point has been raised and it obviously calls for an answer.
In normal times, most articles have a second-hand value that decreases as time goes by. If the article is insured for its new value, and is lost, the insurance company will pay either the new—that is, the insured—value or the actual value at the time of the loss, whichever is the less.
Inflation has, however, changed this picture. As the cost of new articles continues to rise at a rapid rate, so, very often, does the second-hand value of used articles. The actual value of a used article can easily increase instead of decreasing. This may well be less than the increase in price of the new article.
Faced with this situation, insurers introduced "new for old" insurance. This means that, subject to certain conditions, which often include an additional premium, an insured part-worn item which is lost or destroyed can be replaced by a brand-new one for which the insurers will pay the full cost. This change in insurance practice started, I believe, with the insurance of house contents, and by 1975 had extended to some other types of insurance, but I am quite willing to accept that "new for old" cover may not have been available for bands in 1974 and, indeed, may not have been widely known.
This is a bit of a red herring, for three reasons. First, the regiment was, obviously, in no worse a position than anyone else for whom "new for old"

insurance was not available in 1974. Secondly, any compensation that my Department can pay under the Regulations is in any case limited to the estimated value of the items when they were lost. Thirdly, the band's instruments and equipment were not even insured for their real value at the time of the loss. It is the failure by the unit to update the insured value of their instruments and equipment in times of inflation that has really caused most of its difficulties. The hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks shakes his head, but I hope to convince him.
In May 1967 the band's property was insured for £4,220. By October 1969 new instruments had been bought, and the total sum insured was increased to £9,176. During the next four-and-a-half years, in spite of continued inflation, the regiment did not further increase the insured value of the band's property, so when it was lost in June 1974 the insurer's payment was limited to the 1969 value, of £9,176. The real value of the lost articles was obviously greater than that sum, and was, indeed, said by the regiment to have been over £23,000. Had the regiment continued to increase the insured value of the band's property in the 1970s, as it had done in the 1960s, it would have received much more than £9,000 from the insurance company. I accept that in the absence of "new for old" insurance it would not have obtained enough to buy brand-new items to replace those lost but, at the time, this was usual, and certainly does not provide justification for a payment from public funds.
It has been suggested that a payment in this case would not create any precedent, as "new for old" insurance is now available. This, I am afraid, is not the case. Were the public to meet the regiment's claim, public funds would also be expected to bail out any other units that sustained a loss of private effects due to terrorist activity and were, by oversight or otherwise, under-insured.
The representations made by the hon. Member and his hon. Friends have been very carefully considered, but I can hold out no hope that any further money will be forthcoming from public funds above the sum of about £2,500 that has already been paid. I am grateful to my right


hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough for his aknowledgement of that, and for the sensible points that he has made. I think that it should be realised that the money sought from my Department by the band does not appear out of thin air; it is raised by taxation, and I do not think that the taxpayer can be asked to make good the band's failure to take out proper insurance. We could not justify this to the taxpayer. I hope that the band will now be able to accept this.

ASBESTOSIS

2.35 p.m.

Mr. Bob Cryer: I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the subject of insulation workers and asbestos and I am pleased that the newly-appointed Secretary of State is in the Chamber. Insulation workers, who are called laggers, are specially important at a time when the Government are pursuing their "save-it" campaign to cut down on the use of indigenous and imported fuels. About 10,000 men may be employed as laggers in all parts of the country and unquestionably laggers are amongst the 130 to 140 people who die each year from asbestosis as a result of industrial contact.
There are large numbers of firms which vary in size, and laggers may work for several of these. That makes claims, for either breach of statutory duty or negligence, particularly difficult. The industry is a high-risk industry. Although there are good firms, the insulation industry is one of the unacceptable faces of capitalism and it is, by and large, a capitalist jungle.
Many of the workers, and the General and Municipal Workers' Union, have attempted to clarify and improve the position. They have recommended to my hon. Friend the Minister a licensing system for lagging firms, a scheme of compensation for abestosis sufferers and the right for safety representatives under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act to stop work when conditions become hazardous pending investigation by the Health and Safety Executive. I cannot too strongly recommend these courses of action to my hon. Friend, who is deeply concerned about the asbestos industry.
I want to emphasise the need for stern measures to be taken. There is a large gap between the administration of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act and reality. For example, the then Secretary of State for Employment, in a statement following the excellent work accomplished by my hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Madden), said:
New regulations to control the health risk from abestos came into force in 1970, backed by stringent hygiene standards for the control of asbestos dust. These regulations are being rigorously enforced by the Factory Inspectorate."—[Official Report, 30th March 1976; Vol. 908, c. 1103–4.]
I wish that that was absolutely true, because my evidence is that there is a gap between his statement and reality. There is still too much indifference to the risks of asbestos and related materials by those in the board rooms and who are responsible for administration.
The situation at CDN Ltd., which is currently engaged in insulation work for the Central Electricity Generating Board at the Isle of Grain power station, illustrates my argument. Work should be covered by the Regional Engineering Memorandum No. F9, February 1971. The memorandum requires that a colour code be used but in this case no colour code has been used, although written assurances have been given to employees that asbestos is not present in the materials which they are asked to use. It is vital that the colour code should be applied because the site is large and asbestos might be used in some other part of it. The memorandum, which appears to be largely ignored, says that:
Contractors who carry out heat insulation work for the Region are required to comply with this memorandum as a condition of accepting the work.
The appendix of the memorandum sets out the procedures to be followed to meet the dust monitoring requirements of the Asbestos Regulations and of the South-Eastern Region for Non-Asbestos Heat Insulants. It reads:
Asbestos-free materials are accepted as being outside the scope of the Asbestos Regulations 1969, but until more is known about their behaviour, the general precautions as to prevention of dust in atmosphere are to apply in South-Eastern Region.
The appendix also says:
All manufacturers of asbestos-free magnesia, calcium silicate and similar compositions are colouring their products for present and


future identification. Various colours, including yellow, blue, and a pink and brown mixture have been used according to individual choice but manufacturers are aiming at a common colour coding through a British Standards Committee.
The workers at this plant were asked to use material which was white and not colour coded. After repeated protests, laggers insisted on protective clothing, but CDN refused. The workers went on strike and were locked out for 10 weeks. That lock-out is now over but the protective clothing has to be paid for by the workers who also have to pay for cleanning. That might cost them £1 a week, and in view of the 3 per cent. pay increase proposition by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that is a considerable sum.
On the first day back at work the firm was so expert that it offered painters' overalls. The regulations say that protective clothing should be fastened at the neck, ankles and wrists and be hooded.
What makes the position worse is that CDN is a combination of Cape Asbestos, Darlington Insulation and Turner and Newall, and Cape Asbestos ran Acre Mill at Hebden Bridge, in my constituency. The firm already has blood on its hands through the operation of that mill, yet it is prepared to resist the provision of basic protective garments because of the cost.
A further example can be found at Mondial House, which is being constructed for the Post Office. There, repeated action by laggers about asbestos and related materials—in particular, a known skin irritant called "Niflam"—led to changes in contractors, including one previously totally obscure firm, to take over the work. Licensing of lagging firms would stop that sort of evasion of responsibilities.
Cubitts, the contractors dealing with the insulation, have informed the laggers that the Post Office will abandon insulation work on the site and accept more heat loss if they continue to seek the protection of the law by calling in factory inspectors. There is thus an implied threat of unemployment for laggers who are merely seeking to protect their health.
The day after my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made his announcement there was a strike at Barking power station by scaffolders and others working

near some insulation workers, again asking for protective clothing. Both the CEGB and the Post Office, if the claim by Cubitts is correct, must share some responsibility for the position of contractors.
On that same date, 31st March, I met a group called Women Against the Dust in one of the interview rooms in the House. I learned that some of those women used their maiden names to prevent their husbands from being victimised by contractors. Laggers work for many firms. As one contract finishes, they obtain employment with another. It has been known for laggers who bring in the factory inspectors not to be able to obtain a job on a future contract with different firms, because the word goes round that "So-and-so is keen about the regulations." Some employees have had to change their names in order to obtain a job with another firm of contractors. Such contractors are putting profit before health.
I should like to comment briefly on the rôle of the Factory Inspectorate. In this context the factory inspector must be the policeman of industry. The numbers of factory inspectors are insufficient to carry out their manifold tasks. If they have the choice of being consultants or policemen, they must take the rôle of policemen.
In the CDN dispute an inspector wrote:
as far as I am aware without further analysis and research Calcium Silicate and Rocksil dust is not likely to be injurious to health.
That is not very helpful to those working with it. The letter continues:
He would therefore not be in a position to issue a notice prohibiting the work as he saw it on the tanks in the control building where Calcium Silicate slabs were being fitted. I agree that there is a nuisance dust problem which should be resolved in the interest of the welfare of the workers.
But no improvement or prohibition notices were issued to have standards improved immediately.
There needs to be a much greater emphasis by inspectors on the improvement and prohibition notices. In addition, they need to provide much more information on the site. For example, in one visit all that the inspector provided to the employees was the name of the employer, the premises visited, the names of representatives of the employers seen


and of representatives of the employees seen. The report on the decision stated:
Numerous examples of defective and deteriorating asbestos lagging were noted on the premises of Ruberoid Paper Ltd. and Ruberoid Building Products Ltd.
The dangers exist, yet the only action was:
A letter has been sent to the occupier and a further visit is proposed.
To overcome the indifference of some of the insulation companies, the licensing system is essential, as is the right of safety representatives to take action. A scheme of compensation would be the barest justice to workers, some of whom are having their lives taken from them in the pursuit of profit.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Oscar Murton): I remind the House of Mr. Speaker's ruling that the timetable should be strictly adhered to.

2.45 p.m.

Mr. Max Madden: I am greatly indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer) for the opportunity to contribute to this short debate.
The secrecy with which the health dangers of asbestos have been concealed from the public has been stripped away over recent weeks. Now that public attention has been drawn to these matters, the public will not tolerate the veil of secrecy descending again, ploys by the asbestos industry to minimise or ignore the risks, or any further dragging of feet by the Goverment and bodies responsible for taking action in these matters.
There are about 120 types of thermal insulation material and 20 are known to contain asbestos. There is no doubt about the dangers of working with these materials. In a paper presented to a World Health Organisation conference in 1972, headed:
Cancer Risk of Insulation Workers in the United States ",
Professor I. J. Selikoff said:
A serious cancer risk has been demonstrated among asbestos insulation workers in the United States. Approximately one death in five, an extraordinary incidence, has been the result of lung cancer. Gastro-intestinal cancer was more than doubled in incidence, and mesothelioma was responsible for 7 per cent. of all deaths.
A report in 1965 showed that 41 per cent. of the newly-certified cases of asbes-

tosis during the period 1955–63 in the United Kingdom came from the insulation industry. By 1970 the proportion had passed 50 per cent. Another report, in 1963, pointed out that in 1960 and 1961, 32 of the 67 men certified for asbestosis in the United Kingdom were employed as insulators or as asbestos sprayers.
In the period 1967–70, in a study of 2,219 asbestos-exposed workers in the Netherlands, including 712 insulating workers, more than 7 per cent. were diagnosed as having asbestosis. That was a larger proportion than was found in workers manufacturing asbestos cement or asbestos floor tiles, or in shipyard work.
Studies carried out in California, New York, New England and elsewhere all point to the same dangers. Only last October Sweden's National Board of Occupational Safety and Health issued a whole series of directives applying to the use of asbestos. I shall quote briefly from two. The first says:
Asbestos and dust-emitting material containing asbestos may not be used for insulations, irrespective of how the insulations are made.
The second says:
Special precautions must be taken in connection with demolishing and dismantling work where the handling of asbestos or material containing asbestos is involved. Protective clothing and safety breathing equipment should be used.
That is the sort of example that many hon. Members believe the United Kingdom should follow.
My hon. Friend has outlined some matters of grave concern to many of us involving a limited number of firms in this country. We must recognise that the problems of asbestos face not only workers in the asbestos industry and in building, demolition and insulation work but those engaged in many other activities throughout the country. We must face the fact that there is a danger to the public.
I trust that the proposed inquiry into asbestos will be wholly independent and will sit in public to consider these and other matters. I hope that it will show determination in recommending possible action, which should have been taken long ago. If it had been, I believe that we could have avoided the disasters and


tragedy of Acre Mill. The Ombudsman's Report on that factory has done a great deal to contribute to the concern felt today. I hope that at long last we can begin the job of ensuring that the risks of asbestos are known, and seeing that positive action is taken to avoid such tragedies in the future.

2.50 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. Harold Walker): I regret that the necessary time limit must curtail the speech that I might otherwise have made in reply to my hon. Friends the Members for Keighley (Mr. Cryer) and Sowerby (Mr. Madden).
I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley has raised an issue which is an important part of a much broader subject—namely, the health risks from asbestos to people at work and to members of the public. That is an issue that was touched upon by my hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby. As he reminded us, it is a matter on which public attention has been focused consequential upon the Parliamentary Commissioner's Report on the Acre Mill situation at Hebden Bridge.
As my hon. Friends know, I have visited Hebden Bridge and I have met many of the former workers who have been tragically afflicted with this grim disease, as well as members of the public. As my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley knows, I am familiar at first hand with the grim tragedy that has afflicted his constituency. My right hon. Friend who is now leader of the House announced on 30th March, in a statement to which reference has been made, that the Health and Safety Commission was setting up a committee to advise it and Ministers on what further action should be taken to deal with the health risks from asbestos.
Immediately afterwards he had the fullest discussion with the Chairman of the Health and Safety Commission and the Director General of the Health and Safety Executive on all the issues involved. As the House will recall, a further statement has been promised, which we shall be making in due course when the Health and Safety Commission has had time to consider what we have discussed with it.
When asbestosis first began to be diagnosed and recognised as attributable to work with asbestos, the cases were associated with the then predominant manufacturing aspects of asbestos products. The scope of the 1931 Asbestos Regulations was limited to specific manufacturing processes, insulation workers not being included. That omission, among other things, was corrected when the Regulations were revoked and replaced by the 1969 Regulations, which required stringent precautions to be taken to prevent workers, including insulation workers, inhaling asbestos dust.
Ideally, the best method of achieving this aim is to use an alternative material which will do the job just as well, yet present no hazard, or at least a much reduced hazard, to the health of those exposed to it. I shall deal with substitution in a moment, but there is a very large quantity of asbestos still in use for heat insulation, and regrettably the workers involved will still be potentially at risk for some time to come.
What does asbestos dust mean? It is defined in the Regulations as
dust consisting of or containing asbestos to such an extent as is liable to cause danger to the health of employed persons ".
In 1968 the British Occupational Hygiene Society, after carefully considering all the medical and scientific evidence available at that time, recommended a hygiene standard of two fibres per millilitre for chrysotile asbestos. It considered that that standard would reduce the risk of contracting asbestosis—that is, the earliest demonstrable effects on the lung due to asbestos—to less than 1 per cent. of people who are exposed to this level of dust constantly for a period of 50 years.
The standard was adopted by the Factory Inspectorate for the purposes of enforcing the Asbestos Regulations although, in addition, a level of one tenth of that was set for crocidolite—that is blue asbestos—which was considered to present a higher risk. This was a far more stringent standard than any other then in use throughout the world.
How effective has the current hygiene standard been in the prevention of asbestosis? Unfortunately, since asbestosis takes so long to develop, it will be some years yet before this question can be answered with any degree of certainty.


Stringent enforcement of the hygiene standards has undoubtedly resulted in considerable improvements, and the Employment Medical Advisory Service set up in 1970 a continuing survey to monitor the health of asbestos workers in order to produce the necessary information to validate the standard. Further medical and scientific evidence is beginning to become available and a review of these standards will be one of the first tasks of the committee to which I have already referred.
Before leaving the subject of asbestos and turning to other related materials I shall reiterate the importance of employers and employees complying strictly with the precautions required by the Regulations. Much work in the insulation industry is of a short-term nature. There is always a tendency to fail to take appropriate precautions when the job is of brief duration and, for the same reason—namely, the brevity of the job—it is very difficult for inspectors to see the operation in progress. They may arrive before the contractors are on site or after they have left.
The provision of adequate precautions to protect the health of insulation workers is a matter which has caused the unions involved some considerable concern. It was only on Monday of this week that for the second time I met a delegation of heat insulation engineers—namely, the laggers to whom my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley has referred—from the General and Municipal Workers' Union. The delegation was led by my hon. Friend the Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Radice).
My hon. Friend the Member for Chester-le-Street raised the possibility of licensing insulation contractors. That is one of the issues raised at the meeting which I have undertaken to draw to the attention of the Health and Safety Commission. Certainly there are powers in the Third Schedule of the 1974 Act. I know that the House will appreciate that it is primarily a matter for the Commission to decide the extent to which such a proposal might contribute to a diminution of the risks. I hope that when the Regulations on safety representatives, which the Health and Safety Commission has proposed, are made in the near future, safety representatives will make a significant contribution to a more effective

monitoring of and compliance with the Asbestos Regulations.
It is often impracticable to control the dust from insulation work by exhaust ventilation, and in such circumstances the Regulations set out detailed requirements regarding the provision, use, storage and cleaning of protective clothing and respiratory protective equipment. If these requirements are fulfilled, there should be no question of workers breathing asbestos dust or of taking home overalls or other clothing contaminated with asbestos dust. If there are situations and circumstances such as my hon. Friend has described, we deplore them. They appear to be matters that deserve public inquiry. They may have to be examined in the light of the statutory obligations laid down in the Regulations.
I have mentioned, as has my hon. Friend, the use of alternative materials as safe or less hazardous substitutes for asbestos. My hon. Friend reminded us that various insulation materials such as glass fibre, calcium silicate or magnesia reinforced with glass fibre and mineral wool fibre have been used as substitutes for asbestos.
My hon. Friend posed the question that immediately arises—namely, whether those fibrous materials, too, are likely to give rise to similar diseases such as those which are associated with asbestos. One of the earliest materials used as a substitute was slag wool. It was first made in this country in the late nineteenth century. There is no evidence of any cases of fibrosis of the lung similar to asbestosis having arisen from the use of that material.
Several limited epidemiological studies have been carried out both in this country and in the United States on glass fibre workers, but no evidence of a respiratory hazard attributable to these fibres was found other than possibly an excess of bronchitis among retired workers that was found in one study. However, laboratory work has indicated that if very fine mineral fibres, including glass fibres, are artificially injected into the pleural cavities of rats, cancers may be induced. In the light of these laboratory studies, further work is needed.
Research into the health hazard to man of inhaled man-made mineral fibres is being sponsored by the International


Committee on Synthetic Fibres and the European Insulation Manufacturers Association. The International Agency for Research on Cancer of the World Health Organisation in Lyons has announced that it will co-ordinate an independent epidemiological study to establish whether or not there is a cancer hazard to workers in man-made mineral fibre plants in Europe. In addition, the Health and Safety Executive is also sponsoring research.
Until these results are available, calcium silicate, glass fibre and other man-made mineral fibres are at present treated by the Health and Safety Executive as nuisance dusts, inhalation of which ordinarily produces little or no adverse effect after prolonged inhalation. Nevertheless, medical opinion is that the human respiratory system should not be overburdened with dust of any size or kind if the possibility of injury to health is to be avoided. Respiratory protective equipment must be provided if it is impractical to control the dust by exhaust ventilation.
We are not certain whether substitutes for asbestos are safe. But we know that asbestos is highly dangerous. Taking into account the needs of industry, as we must, I am sure that my hon. Friend would agree that it would be wise, until we know the outcome of the research to which I have already referred, to continue to prefer the use of materials which at least seem, in the light of present knowledge, to be safer than asbestos.
In conclusion, I should like to assure my hon. Friend that I and the Health and Safety Executive fully realise the importance of ensuring that the precautions provided for insulation workers are entirely adequate to prevent the risk of injury to their health from the inhalation of dust.
During the last two years I have inevitably and necessarily worked closely with the Factory Inspectors—perhaps more closely than any of my predecessors. During that time I have learned to respect their expertise, ability and dedication to the work that they have to carry out. They have my fullest support and confidence in the difficult work that they have to do. They see themselves, as I see them, as guardians of the interests of workers in the industries which they

examine and monitor and in which they enforce these necessary statutory provisions.
I am sure that the Committee, which was announced in the House on 30th March, which the Health and Safety Commission is setting up, will carefully consider the highly technical, medical and scientific evidence which will be put before it and will give the Commission and Ministers its considered opinions and recommendations as soon as possible.
I shall ensure that what has been said in the House this afternoon is brought to the attention of the Chairman and members of the Commission. I know that, notwithstanding the reluctance shown by my hon. Friend to meet the Chairman, he will be delighted at any time to discuss all the matters which have been raised.

TOXIC WASTE PLANTS

3.3 p.m.

Mr. Victor Goodhew: I am grateful for this opportunity to raise the subject of the provision of toxic waste plants under the Control of Pollution Act 1974. I am also grateful that the Minister is here to answer the debate.
There are provisions in the Act requiring a survey and plan of the needs throughout the country to be carried out, but these have not yet been brought into effect. Indeed, a considerable time could elapse before any new waste disposal facilities are brought into being as a result of those provisions.
Therefore, in my view there is a danger of local authorities, charged with responsibility for finding the necessary sites, accepting proposals in a hurried and unplanned manner. Indeed, with local authorities acting individually, with no national or regional plan to follow, and no co-ordination, we could end up with a patchwork of ill-conceived and hastily erected plans throughout the country far in excess of our needs. [Interruption.] I hope that the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Mr. Kerr), who has just walked into the Chamber, will not waste the time of the House, because we are a bit behind already. [Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Mr.


Kerr) must not intervene from a sedentary position.

Mr. Goodhew: This danger is already a reality and an important area of natural beauty in my constituency could be ravaged and spoiled for all time because of just such an ill-conceived proposal.
The Minister will be aware of an application by Contract Gully Cleansing Ltd. for permission to carry out the construction and operation of a treatment plant for toxic or hazardous liquid industrial waste at Redbourn Chalk Pit, Watling Street, Redbourn. The application dates back to 1974. The Hertfordshire County Council, the responsible authority designate under the Act, presumably anxious to act in that capacity, approved the application. I suppose that it did so feeling that it had to provide a site somewhere in the county.
The application was opposed by the St. Albans District Council, by the parish councils of Redbourn, Harpenden and St. Michaels, by the Redbourn Association, the Hertfordshire Society and other amenity associations as well as local residents of Redbourn. It was also opposed by the Member of Parliament—myself—in a written objection that was submitted to the public inquiry which was held on 18th March 1975.
The result of that public inquiry was that the then Secretary of State dismissed the appeal on matters of technical detail, but in his letter stated that he accepted the site in principle for an appropriately constructed plant. In that it seemed to me that he was pre-empting the right of my constituents to object to any new application. Nevertheless, I have advised the St. Albans District Council and all the others who objected to the original proposal to object to any new application that may be made.
After all, the chalk pit, in attractive rural surroundings, adjacent to the River Ver, is much frequented by walkers, naturalists and anglers. Indeed, the public footpath connecting St. Albans City with Redbourn village runs through the site. The site itself was designated as an area of special scientific interest under the National Parks Act 1949 for geological and botanical reasons. I shall not go into all these matters, because the Minister will have them available to him. Suffice to say that this is an open area of chalk,

which is unusual in Hertfordshire, where the plants encourage butterflies, moths and other insects and animals which otherwise would not be there.
Furthermore, the Rothamstead Agricultural Experimental Station is less than two miles away. All this is apart from the traffic implications of the site being placed in this position.
The Minister will know that Redbourn village has running through it a high street, which is a main trunk road of 24 ft. 6 in., with pavements or footpaths of 3 ft. 3 in. on each side, on which two perambulators cannot pass, and where the requirement for a bypass has been accepted, but has been delayed because of stringency on public expenditure at this time. Therefore, any additional traffic of vast tankers thundering through this village must greatly affect the villagers.
The inspector himself felt bound to admit certain matters. In his letter, on page 2, paragraph 2(2), he said:
To the question of whether that need 
—that is the need for the plant—
is of such overwhelming proportions that it can override the general presumption against any kind of development in the Ver Valley, other than that appropriate to a rural area, there does not seem an easy answer. What amounts to a chemical treatment plant would undoubtedly be fundamentally out of place in such a rural location; and the comings and goings of vehicles to and from the plant and the noise and disturbance that would be created by the vehicular and other activity therein would inevitably be a source of detriment to the rural amenity in the general vicinity of the access land and appeal site.
That seems an extraordinary basis on which the Secretary of State should finally decide in principle in favour of the site. The decision seems to have been based on the inspector's first conclusion. Again—I read from the letter—he said:
Although a liquid industrial waste treatment plant of the type proposed would have the technical capability of treating only some 41 per cent. of the present liquid industrial wastes produced in Hertfordshire "—
which I regard as a somewhat small percentage—
and the total volume of those wastes would comprise only about 12 per cent. of the plant's total capacity "—
in other words, 88 per cent. of the plant's capacity was to come from elsewhere—
I see very little merit in viewing the need for such a waste treatment plant either in terms


of what it would or would not be capable of treating or in the context of the needs of a single county. In order to ensure that the environment is properly and adequately protected, the safe disposal of hazardous wastes is of fundamental importance and this is particularly so of liquid wastes because of the ease with which, if disposed of irresponsibly, they can get into the underground or surface waters and becomes a source of pollution.
I add, in parenthesis, that he can say that again.
The forthcoming county surveys and waste disposal plans that will be required under the Control of Pollution Act 1974 will doubtless enable the problem of waste disposal to be both investigated and dealt with on a comprehensive basis; but in view of the fact that the provisions of the Act requiring a survey and plan have not yet been brought into effect, some considerable time could elapse before any new waste disposal facilities are brought into being as a result of those provisions.
In other words, the then Secretary of State was saying that this is a beautiful spot, that it is the last place an earth for a toxic waste plant, but that as we have not yet got down to making a survey and plan we had better do something. His thinking was, to say the least, a trifle woolly. He was at that time the Minister responsible for protecting the environment—not for destroying it. Even the county council had some reservations. Paragraph 195 of the report of the inquiry said that
In the not very distant future the county council would be required under the Control of Pollution Act 1974 to carry out a comprehensive survey of the waste disposal needs of the county and thereafter to produce and bring into operation a waste disposal plan; and the county council's environmental health officer had agreed that it would have been preferable to build a plant in Hertfordshire after the survey and plan had been completed, not the other way around. He had also agreed that the 59 per cent. of the county's wastes the proposed plant would not be capable of treating would remain a problem if the present application were successful.
So here we are. It is quite remarkable, and what is particularly worrying is the lack of information on this whole subject. On 12th May 1975, I asked the Secretary of State how many sites within a radius of 100 miles of Hertfordshire were the subject of planning permissions or applications for the disposal of industrial waste. The answer was that the information was not available.
It is both astonishing and disturbing that there should be no such information. On 17th March this year I asked a fur-

ther Question of the Secretary of State, about whether he would carry out a national survey to revalue the national and regional needs as to quantity and quality of dangerous waste for disposal. His answer was:
No. Section 2 of the Control of Pollution Act will, when implemented, impose a duty on waste disposal authorities to conduct a survey of the controlled waste in their areas and to decide what arrangements are needed for its disposal. The Act provides for the authorities to co-ordinate their plans where waste arising in one county can most advantageously be disposed of in another."—[Official Report, 17th March 1976; Vol. 907, c. 568.]
Since last year's inquiry, various alternative sites have been mentioned to him. The Minister probably knows about them, but I would gladly write to him about them.
We have the county council's letter which I received only a few weeks ago, which says that
At the Planning Inquiry the County Council's relevant witness was asked, in cross-examination, whether he was aware of other disposal plan applications, the suggestion being that at least one of these might render the Contract Gulley plant unnecessary. The response was given that the County Council were aware of various applications made throughout the country and obviously the Secretary of State would take into account this evidence in reaching his decision.
I wonder whether the Secretary of State did take that into account. I would like to ask the Minister today if he could not persuade the Secretary of State to call in the Redbourn application and all other outstanding applications under this Act and wait until the implementation of Section (2) of the Act before agreeing to any new sites.
I have been approached by a firm of solicitors, Messrs. Denton, Hall and Burgin, which acts for some of the interests locally. Its letter says:
We consider that the most appropriate method for proceeding in this case under existing planning powers is for the Secretary of State to call in this planning application and to set up a planning inquiry commission into this and any other site which could possibly provide a better alternative within the region to be served, and that only after a thorough investigation of these alternative sites should a decision be taken. We think it should be emphasised that these powers are presently available under the Town and Country Planning Act 1971. However, the Secretary of State will not be able to make a decision on the submission of such a commission until the application has either been called in by him


for decision or an appeal against a refusal or non-determination of the planning application by the Local Planning Authority … the very purpose of the planning inquiry commission procedure was to inquire into planning applications involving matters of national or regional importance or unfamiliar technical or scientific considerations.
Surely that fits this case exactly.
Whilst I make a plea for the protection of an area of great natural beauty in my constituency, I have in mind that other mistakes could easily be made if the provision of toxic waste plants takes place in a piecemeal fashion as at present. I ask the Government to take action to prevent such a disaster taking place.

3.17 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Ernest Armstrong): I commend the hon. Member for St. Albans (Mr. Goodhew) on his speech in what is really a continuation of the very spirited protest that he has been making on behalf of his constituents, who feel very strongly about what they regard as an intrusion into the environment of Red-bourn and the Ver Valley. It reflects the sort of local pride that can so often provide a driving force for improving or maintaining the quality of life in an area.
No one welcomes any reduction in the amount of countryside left to us for recreation and the tranquil enjoyment of natural scenery. Unfortunately, there are times when difficult decisions affecting rural areas have to be taken, when a balance has to be struck, and when the problem is not simply whether development should be permitted in an attractive area of countryside, but whether the gain from that development justifies the likely disadvantages from it in terms of reduction in the visual appeal of the area and the impact of the development on the life of the countryside.
In this case, which has been the subject of much correspondence and discussion, the decision of my right hon. Friend to indicate his approval of the scheme in principle, although the appeal was formally refused because of minor technical details, was taken only after long and careful consideration. A wide range of interested parties were represented at the local inquiry, and a similarly wide range of points were raised. All these, together with the inspector's recom-

mendation, were taken into account by the Secretary of State.
My right hon. Friend noted in particular, as had the inspector, that the proposal had the full support of Hertfordshire County Council, the waste disposal authority, and that the Thames Water Authority also considered that the proposed arrangements to ensure the protection of water would be satisfactory.
I do not think that it would be appropriate for me to go into further detail on this particular case. Although the Secretary of State has announced his decision, it is, of course, not out of the question that he may have to consider a further appeal in respect of essentially the same development, as the hon. Gentleman himself has indicated. The hon. Member will, I hope, agree that in these circumstances it would be improper of me to anticipate the statutory processses by discussing the case for and against the development at this time.
The remarks that the hon. Member has made about the general situation in relation to waste treatment plants are, however, another matter, and I shall now deal with them.
The disposal of industrial waste is, as the hon. Member has indicated, a major and growing problem. It is vital that disposal facilities should be available. If they were not, industry would soon grind to a halt. The limited amount of land in this comparatively small island means that new ways of disposing of wastes—new places to put them—must constantly be sought, since any failure to match disposal capacity with the amount of waste being generated would have immediate and disastrous effects on the economic life of the country. The disposal of industrial waste is not an easy process. Done badly or in the wrong place it can threaten water supplies and endanger public health apart from any other environmental considerations.
Not all industrial wastes are dangerous. Most can be disposed of quite safely as long as the right precautions are taken. But it is clearly essential both that such precautions are taken and that a lack of disposal facilities does not tempt people to resort to illegal fly-tipping. For some of the most dangerous wastes, specialised treatment plants, which would serve wide areas of the country, may be


needed, but for the wide range of industrial wastes, which demand care but no exceptional disposal methods, the main requirement is for adequate disposal facilities to be available fairly close at hand. Transporting the vast majority of industrial wastes over long distances for disposal is not only unnecessary; it can be positively harmful to the environment by creating extra traffic and by using up the disposal capacity at specialised plants or sites which would be better reserved for more dangerous wastes. For the great bulk of industrial wastes local disposal is much preferable.
These problems were debated at length both here and in another place during the passage through Parliament of the Control of Pollution Act 1974. There was agreement in all parts of the House that greater control should be exercised over the disposal of waste and that more thought needed to be given to matching the provision of waste disposal sites to the need for them. The Control of Pollution Act therefore provides that waste disposal authorities—in England, the county councils—should survey the wastes arising in or entering their areas as well as the present facilities for disposing of waste. As a result of these surveys the waste disposal authorities will be able to assess what disposal arrangements are needed for wastes in their area. The Act makes each waste disposal authority responsible for drawing up a waste disposal plan.
One of the major purposes of the Control of Pollution Act is to foster the sensible integration of waste disposal activities, whether these are undertaken by local authorities or by private firms. To this end the Act lays on waste disposal authorities the duty to consult widely when drawing up their plans. They must consult the water authority, the waste collection authority—in England, the district council—and representatives of the private waste disposal industry. Particularly important is the obligation on any waste disposal authorities whose plans include the export of waste for disposal in the area of another authority, to consult that authority. In addition, we shall be advising them to keep in touch with neighbouring waste disposal authorities, even where they are not proposing to export waste to them, so that they may see whether there are any

opportunities for sharing which are not immediately obvious. Each waste disposal plan must be made publicly available before it is finalised, so it will be possible for the public as well as for waste disposal authorities to see how neighbouring plans interlock before final decisions are taken.
In view of all these provisions I do not think it is reasonable for anyone to claim that the Control of Pollution Act will lead to a situation in which individual authorities press ahead with meeting their own requirements and disregard what is happening just over their boundaries. Nor do I think it likely that an over-provision of disposal facilities will result. Nationally, we are still likely to need more disposal sites, including treatment plants. On the local level the waste disposal authorities will be in the best position to assess what their waste disposal problems are and how they can best be met. The establishment of a treatment plant requires as much investigation of the demand for the service offered as does any other industrial project. This in itself will tend to prevent the duplication of facilities which the hon. Member fears.
I very much regret that progress in implementing Part I of the Control of Pollution Act has been slower than we originally envisaged. We are hoping to introduce the licensing system for waste disposal sites within the next few weeks, and this will be a big step forward. It will not only give waste disposal authorities the power to exercise positive control over the disposal of waste in their areas; it will also extend their knowledge of the types and quantities of waste that are being disposed of, and where they are going. But, given the constraints on local authority expenditure, it was not possible to do everything at once, and the waste disposal plans, together with the surveys on which they need to be based, have had to take second place. We shall bring in the relevant provisions as soon as we can.
Meanwhile, many waste disposal authorities have gone ahead with their surveys in advance of any statutory requirement, and some are now showing interest in getting on with the plan. I believe that there is a real desire on the part of all waste disposal authorities to


get on with both tasks as soon as the present very difficult financial situation allows.
I have stressed the important rôle placed by Parliament on the waste disposal authorities. This is not to imply that the Government have no responsibilities. My right hon. Friend will determine appeals against the decisions of waste disposal authorities on applications for disposal licences. He will receive copies of each authority's waste disposal plan and will therefore be able to assess the provisions being made in the national context. He will also exercise a general oversight of the new systems introduced under the Control of Pollution Act. The Department's officers are in close touch with the authorities all the time, and the very close contacts that are maintained are being reinforced by periodic meetings to keep the working of the new licensing system under review.
These systems are not sacrosanct. If experience suggests that modifications are necessary, my right hon. Friend will be ready to make them. But it is surely premature to dismiss as inadequate or harmful the provisions which this House has approved before they have even been put into practice. I cannot accept that intervention by Government to dictate whether waste treatment plants should be provided is appropriate. The machinery embodied in planning legislation and the Control of Pollution Act give ample opportunity for all the relevant factors to be taken into account. It would not be a proper use of the resources of central Government to attempt to short-circuit this machinery before it has been given a chance to work.
The hon. Member has raised a serious issue, one with which we have constantly to deal in the Department of the Environment. I assure him that I shall read carefully what he has said on this important matter and will be ready to receive any further representations fom him. In the light of the seriousness of this matter, I welcome this opportunity of putting our view on record. I assure the hon. Gentleman and the House that we shall go on trying to protect the environment, striking a proper balance, and taking note of all representations made by the hon. Member and his constituents on a matter about which they feel so strongly.

3.27 p.m.

Sir David Renton: I am sure that we are all grateful to the Minister and to my hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans (Mr. Goodhew). I do not want to discuss a particular case, although one has arisen in my constituency at Warboys. It is right that we should devolve—if that is not the wrong word—responsibility to local authorities for matters which so greatly affect local people. The county councils, as waste disposal authorities, are in great difficulty sometimes because they realise that the discretion that they have to exercise must depend upon factors which have an influence far beyond their own boundaries.
I hope that, in spite of my agreement with the Minister's remarks about not over-centralising things, in suitable cases where there is obviously difficulty for the local authority, the Secretary of State will not hesitate to call in an application either for a disposal plant or for the use of a site for disposing of toxic wastes.
I wonder whether the Government would consider creating a system for minimising the amount of toxic industrial waste that is created in our society.

PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITALS (DERBYSHIRE)

3.30 p.m.

Mr. Phillip Whitehead: I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) for sitting down on time. I hope not to detain the House for too long.
The background to this debate concerns two prolonged and potentially tragic cases in my constituency which, together, it seems to me, illustrate the need for more psychiatric help and in-patient placement in Derbyshire hospitals. I hope to show that in the Trent area in Derbyshire in particular we are somewhat lacking in that respect, as my hon. Friend the Minister of State has acknowledged several times in correspondence to me.
Both these cases have been going on for years. I know the people well. I have come to know their families well and to respect them. I have in the past invited the assistance of the Department in this matter, thus far without success,


and, as the story unfolds, the House will see that I have not been precipitate in bringing this matter forward for debate. We are talking not of weeks or months but of years of correspondence and pressure in both cases.
For reasons which the House will understand, I do not propose to refer to the two people by name. The young lady has been referred to as Miss X in the Derbyshire papers from time to time, although her real name has also been used locally because she has frequently been before the courts. The young man to whom I shall be referring has not been before the courts in this connection, and I propose to refer to him as Mr. Y. It helps that they are of different sexes and can be so discussed.
The history of the first case is that since the age of 13 this young lady has suffered from a variety of disorders of personality. She was for a period of time put into the local authority hostel for the mentally ill. There have been various attempts to rehabilitate her and to provide employment for her, and she has had a prolonged stay in the Pastures hospital at Derby when her personality disorder was first diagnosed. In 1974 she was transferred to the Francis Dixon unit of the Towers psychiatric hospital at Leicester. She was there for eight months taking part in group therapy treatment, but that was not successful and she was discharged in October 1974.
It is with the events from October 1974 to the present time that I wish to deal, because in this period of time she has on several occasions been before the courts. She has been in and out of mental hospitals in Derby and the Derby area, and the case, I submit, is one which is now on the brink of potential tragedy.
This case came to my notice when the girl's father and a local councillor called a Press conference at the offices of the county council in August of last year to describe the case and the efforts that had been made to get some kind of proper in-patient treatment for her. Since then we have been in what seems to me a spiral not of inactivity but of inability to see that only lasting care for this young lady—and others with her condition—can redeem her and bring her back to a useful life within the community and also help her unfortunate family, which has borne

the strain of coping with many of these disorders for some time.
The first thing that has happened in the case of this young lady is that as a result of being discharged from hospital and sent first to her own home and then to the home of an uncle and aunt who had offered to take care of her, she, after a series of disturbances, committed some trivial offence—I tnink it was breaking a window—as a result of which she was brought before the magistrates' court. The court remanded her to Risley Remand Centre for medical reports. I went to Risley to see her there and made her acquaintance for the first time. The reports were brought to the court, and simultaneously I approached the Department to see whether it was possible—we are talking of events almost 10 months ago—to get proper in-patient help for her in a hospital, though not necessarily in Derbyshire. It seems to me that there should be some back-up, machinery, and if that could not be done there ought to be co-ordination and effort masterminded by the Department.
Unfortunately, that is not what has happened. The report that was submitted to the court by the medical officer at Risley Remand Centre—going back to the time that I saw her—said that she was—as indeed, she is—of "good average intelligence" and that she did not suffer from any serious mental illness. The report continued:
She suffers from a disorder of personality which could be dealt with under the Mental Health Act and she has had this disability since the age of four and there is a possibility that it might be susceptible to training but it would have to be in a rigid structured environment.
On the basis of that and my own estimate of the case, and the inability of both the social services in Derbyshire and the hospital authorities in Derby to cope with this case—in that each was passing it to the other and saying "We shall see what we can do but this is not wholly our responsibility"—I wrote to the Department of Health and Social Security. After some consideration of the case, the Department turned down the request for assistance from outside the area. The medical authorities at Risley were informed on 5th September 1975:
We have carefully considered your letter of 28th August and the accompanying reports but can find no evidence that any treatment


which she may need could not be carried out in a degree of security less than is provided by the special hospitals. We suggest therefore if it is thought that she would be helped by psychiatric treatment the assistance of the Regional Health Authority be sought in obtaining a suitable place.
The letter went on to say that the Mental Health Act could not be used because she was diagnosed as suffering only from psychopathic disorder.
The difficulty with all that is that Miss X came back into the court, and ultimately came up before the crown court in Derby. We must bear in mind that by this time she had been in Risley for a considerable period. I mean no disrespect to the authorities at Risley, but it is not a particularly nice place in which to be. It is essentially a remand centre for alleged offenders. It is not for people who have a mental disorder of one kind or another.
Ultimately, the Area Health Administrator told me at the end of September that this girl could be admitted to the Kingsway Hospital in Derby and that she had been told that it was in her interests to remain there under psychiatric care and treatment until she appeared in the crown court for sentence. As a result of that, her sentence at the crown court was, essentially, that the case was dismissed and the court wished her well in that hospital.
However, I regret to say that after she was moved back to the Kingsway Hospital the sequence of events began to repeat itself. What we had then was a decision of the hospital that it could not cope with her as an inpatient after a period, and it was decided to move her to day care and to send her home.
She went home on 14th February. I visited her parents on the night before she came home on 14th February. Their younger daughter, who is preparing for her A-levels, was leaving home. She was walking out. She could not bear it. She was in a state of great distress. The parents were also very distressed. I persuaded them—I thought it right to do so—that they should at least attempt to go along with what was proposed and that the girl should go to day care at the Kingsway Hospital but for the rest of the time she should be at home.
That situation has not been stable. On 12th March a meeting of the social services authorities and the area health

authority in Derby was held. As a result of this, no agreement could be reached about precisely who was responsible for additional back-up services. The social services department said that it greatly regretted the situation but that there was nothing that it could do, and that the girl was the patient of a particular specialist at the hospital. The hospital said that it hoped that the situation would stabilise and that she would remain as a day patient.
I have, indeed, had letters from people who have been responsible for her treatment at the Thornhill Day Hospital, which is attached to Kingsway Hospital, to say that they think they were making progress with her and that she was responding to treatment and therapy. That is what I would expect. This girl is intelligent and potentially she is a warm human being and someone who could be valuably reintegrated into society. But this would take a great deal of time. There is all the scar tissue of the last nine years somehow to be replaced. That will take a lot of time and it cannot be done in the present unstable situation.
To bring the story right up to date, Miss X has now been locked out from home. Her parents found that they could not take her any longer. The domestic situation was utterly intolerable, and therefore she was locked out. She created a mild disturbance at the hospital. In fact, she threw a typewriter on the floor. I do not think that she even damaged it. However, as a result, she was sent back first to the magistrates' court and then to Risley.
She has been remanded from the magistrates' court until she can appear again in the crown court in four weeks' time. This cyclical pattern is repeating itself. It cannot do any good for her and it is doing no good to her family. It does not cast a very good light on the response that I have had thus far from the authorities, over and above the immediate specialists and social workers who have genuinely tried to help and care for this girl in the interim period.
The position is that there is now some disagreement even between the authorities on how the case ought to be dealt with. I have received a letter—I have permission to quote it—from the specialist in


community medicine of the Derbyshire Area Health Authority. He says:
… it is difficult when the Area Health Authority gets a clinical opinion by a Consultant Psychiatrist that a particular patient is a danger to the public and in the absence of other secure provision being available requires admission to a special hospital, to make alternative provision if the application for special hospital is rejected by administrators in the D.H.S.S. While the clinical opinion may well be wrong, it does seem to me that the department ought to seek further clinical advice before rejecting such an application, and make the arguments available to those responsible for placement.
That is exactly the position today. It is stated there by Dr. MacInnes very succinctly indeed. Here we have a potentially attractive human being of above average intelligence, who, if her personality could be probed, is capable of great friendship and warmth of personality, and she is not being helped because she is not receiving the back-up facilities which she ought to have, as those facilities do not exist. The people at Thornhill cannot help her unless there is more secure environment, and that is not provided by these endless visits to Risley and appearances at the magistrates' court, or by the family disasters.
I shall be more brief about the other case because it has not involved this cycle of events to which I have referred. It is the case of a young man whom I call Mr. Y, in his middle twenties. He had a personality disorder and epilepsy in a fairly mild and controllable form. He has on a number of occasions travelled around the country and has called in at a number of hospitals. I believe he has been to 80 hospitals in all. He is expert at simulating severe illness of one kind or another. He does a good line in cardiac arrest and pulmonary embolism. He can, particularly as he now knows the right answers to give to the questions, fool any specialist in the country for 48 hours. The admission procedure being what it is, it is a costly and frustrating game for all concerned.
This young man has a disorder, which he acknowledges. It is a disorder which has not as yet led to too much trouble or tragedy, although to his mother, with whom he lives, it causes great distress. His doctor wrote to me on 22nd January after correspondence which had gone on for some time, saying:

His tantrums are now becoming more frequent. Both my partner and I feel that there is an increased probability that under stress he will react violently and direct this violence towards his mother. He is in need of skilled psychiatric help but this can be provided only in a secure unit which is able to manage psychopaths. No such unit is available in the Trent Region. Perhaps you could enlist the help of the Minister of State at the Department of Health and Social Security or even the Secretary of State herself. I fear a tragedy.
I have the presence, and I hope the assistance, of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State, and I hope he will have seen the correspondence from our hon. Friend the other Under-Secretary of State dealing with this case and the difficulty of providing any kind of secure unit. When this young man has been offered appointments at hospitals he has turned them down, and this is always the situation. It is no good saying "The consultant psychiatrist will see him. If he kept his appointments and came in regularly to see us, so that we could prescribe the right balance of drugs and group therapy, he would be much improved." No doubt he would, but it is a feature of this disorder, and of the instability that goes with it, that the person concerned cannot keep to such a régime. He shies away from it. That is why I used the phrase "secure unit". By that I do not mean incarceration in drugged stupor and being shut away, as may have to occur in certain cases of chronic mental illness.
The only way in which a person with a personality disorder of this kind can be helped and treated is by the provision of a secure environment. That means the provision of the degree of restraint and in-patient care that is necessary. I realise that there are difficulties in treating personality disorders. I have come to know both the young people whose cases I have described—and their families—and I feel for them in a potentially tragic situation. They have been shuttled from one holding operation to the next. Their insecurity makes it unlikely that they will ever have a firm grip on what might be offered to them.
Given that there has been no particular response from the Area Health Authority to the appeals from the Department to put forward proposals for interim secure facilities attached to existing psychiatric hospitals, I hope that the Department will take steps to help these young people


and others like them by offering that ultimate back-up which it is the job of central Government to provide.

Mr. James Scott-Hopkins: Mr. James Scott-Hopkins (Derbyshire, West) rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bryant Godman Irvine): Has the hon. Gentleman the permission of the Minister and the hon. Member for Derby, North (Mr. Whitehead) to intervene?

3.46 p.m.

Mr. James Scott-Hopkins: I should be grateful if the hon. Member for Derby, North (Mr. Whitehead) and the Minister would allow me to speak for two minutes to back up what the hon. Member for Derby, North said.
I also come from Derbyshire, and I have had a similar experience—not quite so harrowing—to those related by the hon. Gentleman. My constituency is further to the north of the county, and it was impossible to find a secure environment for the constituent I have in mind whom I do not intend to name. He had to go for treatment to the Manchester area.
Derbyshire is in great need of a secure psychiatric unit where young people who are suffering from these disorders—unhappily the sufferers are nearly always young—can be kept under proper supervision and properly treated. We do not want iron bars—far from it. We want a stable, secure environment. Unfortunately, that does not exist. All consultants and doctors in my part of the world will back up what the hon. Gentleman and I have said, and I hope that the Minister will be able to give us a ray of hope even in these stringent economic times.

3.47 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Michael Meacher): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Derby, North (Mr. Whitehead) on the lucid way in which, not for the first time, he has made such a strong case for his constituents. I am grateful to him for providing this opportunity to discuss the service for those patients who, although not having the dangerous or violent pro-

pensities which would require their admission to special hospitals, cannot satisfactorily be managed in the ordinary wards of psychiatric hospitals. As my hon. Friend pointed out, these patients have been a source of increasing concern to central Government, to the health and local authorities and to the courts. My Department is keenly aware of the pressing need for appropriate accommodation for these patients and the requirements of the hard-pressed staff who carry the burden imposed on them by the disruptive tendencies of these patients.
It may be helpful if I briefly outline the background to the present situation. Let me say straight away that since the inception of the National Health Service it has been part of its responsibility to provide facilities to treat all types of patients with mental disorder, the only exception being those who require to be treated in conditions of maximum security. The Mental Health Act 1959 did not change this fundamental responsibility. The changes of attitude which it helped to promote have brought about a vast reduction in the number of patients formally detained, and in restrictions on patients' liberty. But there now seems a danger of this change of attitude being carried too far by some, to the point of reluctance to provide a degree of supervision and restriction that some patients clearly need, and to regard these patients as not being an NHS responsibility.
In recent years there has been a growing problem in a number of areas as more and more psychiatric hospitals have become entirely open door and have often not made alternative provision for the continually difficult, behaviourally disturbed patients who were formerly contained, no doubt not very satisfactorily, in locked wards. One consequence has been greater pressure on the special hospitals which are already over-crowded. In any case, they provide a greater security than necessary for these groups of patients. The Department does not wish to see a reversal of the trend towards more open care and treatment of the great majority of patients in hospitals for the mentally ill. However, places will still need to be made available in each region for patients requiring treatment in varying degrees of security short of that provided by the special hospitals.
Because of mounting criticism, a Departmental Working Party was established in 1971 to consider the present and future needs for security and to make recommendations. Both the revised report of that Working Party and the Interim Report of the Butler Committee on Mentally Abnormal Offenders emphasised the urgent need for regional security units. Since then, the Department has taken vigorous action to encourage health authorities to meet this need. In July 1974 the Department issued a circular which asked all Regional Health Authorities to take urgent action to establish such units. The initial aim is to provide 1,000 places, either by adapting existing buildings or by constructing new purpose-built premises, and a special capital allocation will be made to regions for this purpose once proposals have been agreed.
In the meantime, before security units can be provided, authorities have been asked to designate certain hospitals to provide treatment on an interim basis for this group of patients in conditions which adequately meet their needs. All Regional Health Authorities have recently been investigating the position in their regions and a few authorities have submitted definite plans in the shape of formal planning submissions. However, in October 1975, the final Report of the Committee on Mentally Abnormal Offenders criticised the lack of progress in the provision of such units. The Report noted that, whilst consultations were proceeding in most regions, clear statements of intent were lacking in some, and recommended that in order to achieve more speedy progress the running costs as well as the capital costs should be met from central Government funds.
This recommendation has, I am glad to say, been accepted by my Department, and in February of this year Regional Health Authorities were told that the network of regional security units must be proceeded with forthwith and they were notified of the amounts of money which would be allocated to them in 1976–77. All Regional Health Authorities have been asked to produce proposals immediately and to proceed with the establishment of units as quickly as possible. The aim is for all regions to have permanent Units in operation by 1980. It is to be

hoped that the authoritative backing of the Butler Report on the value of the units and the fact that the Department accepts that view and has agreed to fund them will result in more rapid progress than we have seen so far.
Now let me turn to the particular problems of Derbyshire and the Trent Region, to which my hon. Friend has referred. As to Security Units, officers of the Trent Regional Health Authority in August 1974 set up a working party to consider the provision of facilities for patients requiring treatment under conditions of security. They discussed various possibilities with officers of certain Area Health Authorities, including Derbyshire Area Health Authority, and the outcome was that the Regional Health Authority last year authorised a start to be made on the planning of a unit of about 60 places at the Towers Hospital, Leicester, to serve the Trent Region. The Regional Health Authority is pressing ahead with this unit but even so I am sorry to say that it is unlikely to be operational for possibly three or four years yet. I accept that that is disappointing, but we have to consider the extreme tightness of resources, to which reference was rightly made.
The Regional Health Authority is also discussing with the Nottinghamshire AHA (T) the possibility of finding a site for a unit of about 40 places to cater for mentally handicapped patients in the region requiring secure accommodation. My hon. Friend will be aware that two wards at Aston Hall Hospital near Derby are already formally designated as secure accommodation for severely mentally handicapped patients. In short, there is some progress to be reported concerning provision of security units in the Trent Region, even though it is not as fast as both the Regional Health Authority and the Department would have wished.

Mr. Whitehead: Aston Hall is not for people with personality disorders but for the severely mentally handicapped.

Mr. Meacher: I accept that the hospital unit to which I am referring has a different function from that which would be suitable for Miss X, to whom my hon. Friend referred, but I have indicated the situation concerning the security units. I shall be dealing with the interim units


in the Trent Region shortly. Perhaps I should turn to that aspect now.
I have to say straight away that there is even less progress to be reported in the provision of interim security arrangements in the Trent Region. I am not suggesting that the Regional Health Authority does not accept the responsibilities placed upon it by my right hon. Friend in this respect. Indeed, it is on public record as fully supporting departmental policy in this matter, and has expended a good deal of time and energy in the last 18 months or so in trying to ensure, in conjunction with Area Health Authorities, that interim arrangements are made whereby particular hospitals are designated to provide treatment in conditions of security until such time as proper regional security units can be provided.
It is with considerable regret that I have to report that over the past 18 months the Regional Health Authority in consultation with the Area Health Authorities—in spite of repeated and conscientious efforts to this end—have been unsuccessful in their attempts to designate interim accommodation for this purpose. Quite recently the Regional Health Authority has made a further effort in the case of three Area Health Authorities, including Derbyshire, to designate interim accommodation for this purpose, and linked the request with an offer of both capital and revenue funds. Unfortunately, Derbyshire Area Health Authority has not felt able to agree to the Regional Health Authority's request and replies from the other Area Health Authorities so far approached are still awaited. In the meantime, the Regional Health Authority continues to receive requests for the accommodation of disturbed patients—including those with personality disorder, to whom my hon. Friend referred—and it is urgently considering what steps it can now take to enable it to meet its responsibility for providing this service.
It is only fair to point out that both proposals by the Regional Health Authority and Area Health Authorities for the designation of hospital beds for interim security purposes have met with considerable resistance from some medical, nursing and other staff. It must

be recognised that some professional staff are genuinely doubtful about the merits of providing secure accommodation in existing psychiatric hospitals and feel that such a move is both retrogressive and might harm the good name of the hospitals in which they are working.
It must also be conceded that whether or not a person's disorder requires or will respond to medical treatment is a matter of clinical judgment, and differences of opinion between doctors in individual cases can and undoubtedly do arise from time to time. This is particularly relevant in the difficult field of personality disorder to which my hon. Friend made so much reference, and the final decision must rest with the doctor who would carry out treatment if the patient were admitted to hospital.
The Butler Report stresses that psychopathic offenders present particular difficulties to the health services. Where treatment and facilities are offered but repeatedly rejected, and where any future law-breaking is likely to be minor or of nuisance value only—I think that is the case to which my hon. Friend referred—the Committe thought that it may be right to accept that the offender was not susceptible to rehabilitation, and that the official services should consider whether continuing attempts to help would serve a useful purpose. As we said in our recent White Paper "Better Services for the Mentally Ill", we need to think very carefully about this whole field, and we are currently considering the need for further research and new approaches to this very difficult problem.
We feel that all that can be done by central Government to assist in the speedy provision of these facilities has been done within the very limited resources which are available. What is required now, I think, is for health authorities—this is not to be underestimated—with the full backing of the Department already given both as to policy and to finance, to redouble their efforts to win the co-operation of the staff, which should not be neglected, and to establish both the interim and in due course the more permanent security arrangements which, as my hon. Friend eloquently described in these two cases are so urgently needed.

M25 (CHERTSEY-WISLEY)

4.0 p.m.

Mr. Geoffrey Pattie: This is the third Adjournment debate that I have been fortunate enough to secure during my time in the House, and I suppose that it is very much the spirit of the day that all these occasions ought to be used for prodding the bureaucratic machine into some kind of action.
The House may recall that on 26th November 1974, my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow) and I raised the question of when the Government intended to announce their decision on the route to be followed by the Chertsey-Wisley section of the M25.
At that time, I told the House that the concept of the M25 dated back to 1936. In those days it was a light in the eye of Mr. Hore-Belisha. Not surprisingly, the project became dormant with the onset of war, but it gained a new lease of life in the Abercrombie Plan for the post-war reconstruction of London.
The next time that we heard about this concept was when the ill-fated Greater London Development Plan was published, and shortly afterwards, in June 1971, the first public inquiry into this section was held. Two and a half years later, in September 1973, a decision letter was produced by the Department of the Environment deferring the decision pending further consultations.
On 1st April 1974, six months after publication of the decision letter, the Minister said, in answer to a Question from me:
My right hon. Friend will make a statement as soon as evaluation of the various options is complete."—[Official Report, 1st April 1974; Vol. 871, c. 281.]
In reply to my Adjournment debate in November 1974, the then Minister announced the reopening of the public inquiry, some 14 months after the decision letter had been published.
We then waited a further three months for the public exhibition in February 1975, and it took a further three months after that for the reconvened public inquiry to open.
There are a number of matters to which I wish to refer about the inquiry itself, and I shall do that later in my speech.
At the second inquiry in May 1975, the number of options for the route was increased from two—the original route, and what is known locally as the "BAC route"—to five, with a corresponding increase in the number of people affected by planning blight and without any redress under the Land Compensation Acts.
Once again, time slipped away. Before we knew where we were, we were into 1976, eight months after the second inquiry and still with no sign of a decision.
On 26th January of this year, the Minister answered a Question from me in these terms:
The complex issues raised in the inspector's report are being urgently considered. My right hon. Friend will give his decision as soon as possible."—[Official Report, 26th January 1976; Vol. 904, c. 22–3.]
On 3rd March, I wrote to the then Secretary of State expressing the annoyance and impatience that my constituents and I felt at the continued delay in reaching a decision and reporting that rumours were circulating in my constituency which suggested that three routes had already been unofficially discarded and that some people had been informed of this.
On 19th March of this year the Minister replied:
I assure you that the Secretary of State's decision will be announced as soon as it is possible to do so. I could not say exactly when this will be, but we are considering the inspector's report on this important section of the M25 as a matter of urgency.
On Monday, following the announcement that we were to have today's debate, I received a letter from the Minister stateing that the decision would be announced at the end of the second week in May. That will be 12 months after the opening of the public inquiry and nearly five years since the first inquiry in 1971 and about eight years from the time of the first inquiry to the opening of the motorway.
In the late 1950s, when the Ml was being constructed, the gap between the first inquiry and the opening of the motorway was about four years. In the last 15 years the time taken to construct a road has doubled. I am sure that the Minister will refer to that fact in his reply.
The second aspect that has disturbed my constituents is the conduct of the inquiry itself. I want to make it clear


that I am not suggesting that the inspector who carried out the inquiry was acting improperly. He was simply carrying out the rules laid down for him. The comments that I make about the procedures are relevant and are based on the M25 inquiry, but they are also germane to other public inquiries.
Public exhibitions, held prior to inquiries, are an excellent innovation and they should put the problems to be considered at the inquiry into proper perspective and enable local people to make a correct assessment of the options open to the Minister. But in this case that did not happen. The intention is to bring in the public, at least to a certain degree, but one either has to shut out the public altogether—which no one would suggest is correct—or one has to bring them right in and carry the consultation procedures further than at present.
The M25 exhibition had sizeable gaps. No information was available on aspects of noise and flooding, which are important to the area. Officials did their best, but they were unable to answer many detailed questions put to them by local residents, who, in many cases, were told that they could not inspect detailed maps and drawings. In some cases, the road construction unit was very firm and allowed certain residents' representatives to make copies of documents only after my hon. Friend the Member for Woking and I had exerted considerable pressure. The effect of the exhibition was therefore somewhat reduced, because it was not possible to evaluate the various route options. I submit that if such exhibitions are to be worth while in future, local people must be given a full brief of all the options likely to be considered.
There were a number of unsatisfactory aspects of the inquiry itself. First, the inspector—I am speaking of inspectors in general—is a technical officer appointed to assess the evidence presented. He is not legally qualified and yet he has to assess evidence in quasi-judicial proceedings that often involve barristers or QCs. In this case, the inspector spent the first day listening to submissions about the legal validity of the inquiry and then said that he was not competent to rule on that. Perhaps a legal assessor or someone similar should be appointed to sit with

the inspector to cover this aspect of an inquiry.
I turn next to the question of procedure. It was immediately obvious that local residents were not aware of any rules of procedure. In my experience, inspectors are usually very good about this and take great trouble to point out to local residents what their rights are. But this is an inadequate substitute for the local residents having legal representation at public inquiries.
The appointment of the inspector is currently made by the Secretary of State. Many people feel that, again without impugning any individual's motives, as it is the head of the Department who will make the final decision the Department is, in a sense, judge and jury in an issue in which it has prime concern. The Minister might consider whether it would be better to redeploy the people now responsible for setting up the tribunals into a separate special tribunal service, so that that belief by the public does not gain further credence.
People who can show that they have a legitimate local interest should be legally represented and have legal aid. There is always the problem of having to raise several hundreds of pounds, if not thousands of pounds, to pay for a barrister at local inquiries. Without legal representation one is very much one down, despite all the help that the inspector may give. The local residents are in the position of being the rabble, wondering when they will have their chance. They feel very intimidated by all the legal dignitaries bobbing up and down on behalf of the county council and others.
The matter of venue and accommodation is a problem. It is very important to hold the inquiries in the area concerned, but the M25 inquiry was held in a cramped hall, full to overflowing.
The order of evidence was changed on a number of occasions, to suit counsel. If the residents had been legally represented, their counsel could have got together with the others to sort out the resulting problems of people who had taken time off work to give evidence and whose personal lives had been thrown into considerable disarray for two or three weeks.
It should not be possible for groups to raise questions about new routes during the course of an inquiry or after a specified cut-off date before it. In this case it was possible for people to say, with no basis, "I represent such-and-such a residents' group, and it would be very nice if the route went here", just drawing something on the map. The proposal was released to the local newspaper, and although it had no status the inspector felt that he had to take it into account. Property anywhere near that wild, maverick route was effectively totally blighted, just as though it was on one of the Department's own routes.
I apologise for having taken so much time to raise these issues, but one should think not only of the particular local difficulties, bad though they have been, but of the wider issues and how we could improve procedures at future motorway planning inquiries.

4.14 p.m.

Mr. Cranley Onslow: I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Chertsey and Walton (Mr. Pattie) for giving me a minute or two to intervene and to the Minister for agreeing that I should do so.
I congratulate my hon. Friend on his persistence in raising the matter once again and blasting out of the Minister at least one thing—the date by which he intends to make a decision. Given the imminence of local government elections in the area, local electors may regard it as rather rum if he makes it known that the decision will not be announced until after polling day. For the hon. Gentleman's sake, as well as for the sake of my electors, I hope that he will firmly agree this afternoon that the announcement will be made before the local electors go to the polls. Local people cannot understand what the delay is all about. They were encouraged last summer to believe that the decision following the inquiry would be announced within weeks rather than months. They have been getting increasingly frustrated and anxious.
As my hon. Friend said, many people who have bought houses are as anxious as those who wish to sell houses because they have to move elsewhere. Many people have suffered a considerable loss.

In at least one case a substantial loss has been incurred without any opportunity to recover under the statutory blight provisions.
There is a lingering doubt about the inquiry, and some considerable feeling. If tempers remain as high as they were last summer, there might well be complaints to the Parliamentary Commissioner about the adequacy of some of the evidence. That must put the matter back into the melting-pot. That is what is wrong. We need a decision in the interests not only of local residents who are affected by all the possibilities, but of residents throughout a much wider area.
The delay in starting this essential link road has greatly increased the prospects that through-traffic from the M25 to the M 3 and M4, not having a full connection, will make its way across our constituencies. We may find traffic using a series of short cuts on totally unsuitable roads. In any event, the roads will be churned up by construction traffic. People in the Woking residential area generally will be subjected to an intolerable traffic nuisance for two or three years. That will probably happen because of the continued delay in the making of this decision.
The link between the M25 and the other motorways must be completed as quickly as possible. It is undesirable that there should be any cross-cutting across this corner of Surrey. I hope that the Minister will tell us that he appreciates that point. This has been an unhappy story. It has continued for too long. I hope that the Minister will say something firm this afternoon that will at least give the people concerned some encouragement.

4.17 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Kenneth Marks): I am grateful to the hon. Member for Chertsey and Walton (Mr. Pattie) for drawing the attention of the House once again to the particular difficulties faced by his constituents in connection with the Chertsey to Wisley section of the London orbital route, for giving me the opportunity of expressing the Government's concern in relation to the scheme, of commenting on some of the complex problems that we face in relation to motorway construction and before motorway construction, and of reiterating the high


priority that the Government continue to attach to the completion of the M25 London orbital route, of which the Chertsey-Wisley section forms part.
I take note of what the hon. Gentleman has said about public inquiries in general. I am almost sorry that he did not label the debate "Public Inquiries in General". If he had done so, I might have persuaded my right on. Friend the Minister for Planning and Local Government to reply. I shall ensure that my right hon. and hon. Friends who are affected by the current controversy about public inquiries in general take carefully into account what he has said.
The hon. Gentleman described the history of this case, and I shall refer to it again later. I should like to say first of all that I am aware of the length of time that has elapsed since proposals for this section of motorway were first published, in 1970. I very much regret the uncertainty that local residents have suffered over the years since then.
Motorway proposals inevitably cause blight. I speak with feeling as a constituency Member as well as a Minister. I appreciate that these proposals can have damaging effects not only on the immediate line of a proposed route but in surrounding areas, where people feel uncertainty about the effect which the new road will have on their lives. I realise that delays in giving decisions mean longer periods of uncertainty, and I quite understand the feelings which may be aroused as a result.
These problems are not uniquely associated with Chertsey-Wisley but are common, to a greater or lesser degree, to all major road projects and indeed to other types of development projects, as many hon. Members will appreciate. A new major road scheme resulting in the expenditure of a great deal of public money, about which we are constantly reminded, and the creation of a structure which may prove to be a prominent and permanent feature of the landscape inevitably requires the most careful preparation and planning.
A very important motorway, such as the M25, can also be expected to have a profound effect on the pattern of transport and social habits over a wide area and to have a particular impact on the area through which it passes. The

selection of the route of a new road is not to be made without careful deliberation, without appreciation of the views of very many different groups of people, and without full consideration of the complex issues which may be involved.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the speed with which the Ml went through. I am not sure whether there were any objections, but certainly they were very few compared with the numbers we get on motorways today and on the consultation process which takes place beforehand. I believe that the consultation process, although it adds to the time, is a valuable asset to the participation of people in the area concerned regarding what should take place.
We take these responsibilities very seriously. I believe that the ultimate results generally bear out the great care taken by the Department in accommodating the interests of everyone affected as fairly as possible. I assure the House that the Department makes every effort to keep delays to a minimum and to avoid perpetuating the circumstances of blight. This is certainly true of the Chertsey-Wisley section of the M25.
It may be helpful to say a word about the London outer orbital route as a whole. Proposals for an orbital route around London have been under consideration for many years and they have been included in development plans since the 1930s. The then Minister for Transport announced in August 1966 that she intended to proceed with further surveys to establish the South orbital road as a motorway between Staines and Wrotham in Kent.
The Minister for Transport later announced that the outer orbital route around London, which was currently in preparation, would be known as the M25 Motorway. This route, which has general support, will relieve London of through traffic, will act as a bypass of the capital and will facilitate movement between the major radial routes.
Ministers have stated in this House on a number of occasions that the Government attach the highest priority to its completion. I am glad to be able to say that, subject to the satisfactory completion of the statutory procedures and to the availability of funds, the whole route should be in use by about 1983 or


1984. Subject to the same reservations, the section south of the Thames between Egham and the Dartford Tunnel should be completed rather earlier—by about 1981.
To the north of Chertsey the length between the M3 at Thorpe and the Runnymede Bridge is under construction and is expected to be opened to traffic early next year. Between Thorpe and Chertsey the route is fixed, but there are further statutory processes-"to be undertaken and it is hoped that construction will start early in 1978. East of Wisley, the line of the motorway is fixed as far as Sevenoaks, a distance of nearly 30 miles, and of this the section between Rcigate and Godstone is already open to traffic. The public are being consulted about the route of the section between Sevenoaks and Swanley, while the next section between Swanley and the Dartford Tunnel approach road is under construction and due for completion at the end of this year. I should also mention that from Sevenoaks the M26 will run eastwards to connect with the M20 near Wrotham and this will provide a through route from the Channel ports to the south and west of London.
I turn now to the Chertsey-Wisley section with which the hon. Member for Chertsey and Walton is most concerned. It may be of help to the House if I explain some of the complex issues which have had to be tackled since the proposals were published in 1970. The draft scheme was considered at a public inquiry which took place between June and September 1971. The main issues arose from the suggestion by an objector of an alternative route across the British Aircraft Corporation airfield at Wey-bridge. The advantages claimed for this were that it would avoid the residential property in New Haw, Byfleet and West Byfleet which would be affected by the published route.
At that stage the Department had not given any very detailed consideration to this alternative possibility, principally because it was expected that there would be a continuing need for the BAC to operate from the Weybridge works and airfield.
The inspector considered the objectors' views very carefully and, from the information which was available to him, concluded that he would have been in favour of the alternative route were it not for its effects on the activities of the BAC at Weybridge dependent on use of the runway.
Bearing in mind the evidence that BAC had given as to its future plans or intentions in regard to such activities, and the employment likely to be afforded, the inspector considered that he had to find against the alternative route, but he drew special attention to the arguments the objectors had put to him and recommended that a confidential report should be obtained on the future of the Weybridge works before a final decision was taken
After carefully considering the inspector's report, and taking account of changed circumstances of the BAC's Weybridge operations, the then Secretary of State announced in September 1973 that further studies would be made of the issues affecting both the published and alternative routes. He also gave an undertaking that there would be no final decision on the motorway route until an opportunity had been given for further public consultation, whether this was in connection with the published scheme, modified or otherwise, or by way of revised proposals to be published in a new draft scheme and subject to all the usual objection procedures.
The very thorough investigation of the main alternatives which followed brought to light important revisions of the information which had been before the inspector at the 1971 inquiry. The new evidence was both environmental and technical and related both to the published and the BAC routes; the possibility of flooding emerged also as a significant factor.
In the event, the Secretary of State decided that the proper course would be to reopen the inquiry into the Chertsey-Wisley section of the M25 and, in an earlier Adjournment debate on 26th November 1974, my predecessor announced this decision to the House.
As a preliminary to reopening the proceedings, plans and information about the alternatives were put on display at local exhibitions held in February 1975 to


give all concerned an opportunity to consider the fresh information available and prepare any further representations they might wish. The inquiry duly took place in May and June of last year before a new inspector, and it is, of course, an announcement of the decision following this inquiry that hon. Members are now awaiting.
The hon. Gentleman raised points about the conduct of the public inquiry. I shall consider what he said, although I cannot comment on the specific matters involved prior to the announcement by the Secretary of State.
I understand and share the concern of hon. Members and their constituents to have this matter resolved, and I would hope that what I have already said about the importance of the M25 motorway will reassure them that I, too, am most anxious that there should be no unnecessary delay in fixing the route of this important section. It is essential that the decision should be the right one. The issues involved are complex and considerable differences of view have been expressed.
At last year's inquiry, there were some 300 objections to the published route, and over 500 counter-objections to the alternatives proposed by objectors. All of these have had to be taken into account in considering the report of the inspector who held the reopened inquiry, and this is clearly a task of some magnitude.
However, I am glad to say that good progress is being made, and I expect that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will be able to make an announcement within the next month. I hope that hon. Members and their constituents will bear with me until then.
Although, as I have said, I accept that they have already suffered uncertainty for far too long, I think it fair to say that, bearing in mind the complexity of the task, the time that has elapsed since the inquiry was reopened last summer—which, in effect, took the position back to the beginning—has not been excessive. The announcement, when made, will ease the problem of blight. The Department would be prepared to purchase properties affected by the selected route and the shadow of blight will be lifted from the others.

SCHOOL-CROSSING PATROLS

4.28 p.m.

Mr. Bryan Davies: I am sure that the Minister, no less than myself, would enjoy a well-earned Easter break without the problem of school-crossing patrols in London, and Enfield in particular, being considered by this House. It is for this reason that I feel particularly privileged to have the opportunity of addressing our minds, if only for a short period, to the proposal for the reduction in school-crossing patrols in the London area. I am shocked that economies should have been directed at this inexpensive but essential service.
I was pleased, as I am sure was the whole House, by the Minister's recent announcement on increased road safety provision for schoolchildren. Last year, for instance, a major publicity campaign costing nearly £600,000 was launched. It was particularly directed at the road safety problems of the 5-to-9-year olds. This is a group which we ought to ensure is educated properly in road safety particularly when it is realised that in the last year for which full figures are available—1974—no fewer than 505 young children were killed on British roads and 33,000 were injured. It is certainly not before time that major efforts were made on the part of Ministers to improve road safety for schoolchildren.
I wonder how we can reconcile this with the rather savage reduction in school-crossing patrols which has taken place in recent months in the London area. Each patrol, I am assured, costs only a small figure—less than £500 a year. In London, therefore, last year the total saving effected by this economy was probably below £50,000. That is surely but a small fragment of any major budget. It is certainly a very small fragment of even that budget which is being devoted to publicity for road safety measures. Yet I maintain that road safety patrols contribute at least as much to the welfare of our children on the highway as education within schools on the subject, however desirable and important that is.
The school-crossing patrols direct a specific service at children. They are there for only restricted periods of the day to ensure that young children succeed


in crossing busy roads. The criteria before such patrols are instituted are severe. Many hon. Members will be aware of the difficulty of convincing the authorities of the necessity for such patrols, even in areas where their constituents have identified the dangers to children and the problems with traffic.
The school-crossing patrols provide a service which is greatly supported by the community. In connection with one crossing with which I have been particularly concerned in recent months—the crossing in Ordnance Road, which is patrolled in the interests of children at Chesterfield Road School—the parents have demonstrated their social concern about the withdrawal of this facility. They began by presenting a petition to me with more than 500 signatures. They continued by sending letters to newspapers, and they succeeded in interesting that all-powerful expression of the media these days, television.
The parents themselves have been prepared to do their own homework, and not just their children's. They organised surveys in which detailed statistics were taken of the incidence of traffic on the road, including the number of vehicles passing at peak hours. They also paid particular regard to a crucial statistic in that situation—the attendance by police officers—because they had been assured that the withdrawal of the crossing patrol would be covered by the attendance of police officers whenever possible.
I raise this matter not just as one of local concern to a specific number of constituents, and not just because I believe in the desirability of restoring this patrol and that an emphasis should be placed on road safety. I raise it also because there is no local authority to which I can present the case of the parents. Had there been, I suggest that more progress might well have been made. I cannot see how a local authority would be deaf to the pleas of local people once it had identified so clearly their requirements in this respect.
The responsibility for crossing patrols in London, as opposed to the rest of the country, in fact lies not with local authorities but with the Metropolitan Police. I have enormous respect, as, I think, have the vast majority of the British people, for the work of the police

—particularly the London police, who are facing increasing difficulties. Their record in recent years has been one which we would all applaud. But I maintain that in this matter, which I recognise is not one of the most significant issues before the police, they have got their priorities wrong. Not only is the safety of children threatened, not only are local feelings being ignored, but the decision, in all honesty, is unjustifiable on cost grounds.
What is happening at present is that where patrols are being withdrawn, local police are doing their best to repair the deficiency by using skilled professional police officers who are taken off other duties to fill the gaps in these patrols. While the present concern for economy in public expenditure is proper, in this particular instance not even that is being achieved. I have had the opportunity to discuss the issue with Metropolitan Police officers and I have been able to identify their particular difficulty. When restraint on expenditure has been placed on them by the Government it has been expressed over a period of time in manpower terms. The Metropolitan Police have repeatedly looked to a situation in which they could demonstrate that they were not increasing the numbers of staff.
But as far as I can ascertain they were not under any obligation to offer any other measure of economy in this respect. Therefore it would appear that we could arrive at a situation where, provided that the total number of staff remained the same, the police were meeting Government requirements.
Although this result may be achieved by the withdrawal of a crossing patrol, representing a certain element of manpower, its replacement by highly paid senior police officers costs the public purse a great deal more.
I do not blame the Metropolitan Police for trying to achieve the best establishment position they can. That is quite right. But it is an odd situation where the Government target figures are laid down in terms of manpower figures on the establishment and no clear indication is given as to the levels of various sections of the staff.
The reason why the Minister was able to indicate that nearly 100 crossing patrols have been withdrawn in London in the past 18 months is that they have


not represented net savings to the public purse. What they have represented is a transfer of resources from crossing patrols to other elements in police duties, other contributions to the effectiveness of the force. At present we are getting the worst of both worlds. The irregularity of the attendance of police officers means that safety is not guaranteed.
Local police chiefs have indicated, for example, that when the alarm bells are rung and it is necessary for a maximum number of the police force to be on duties such as for the protection of passengers on public transport during the latest bomb threats, officers are transferred to these necessary duties and other duties are neglected. Is it surprising, therefore, that one of the duties which are most obviously forgone at that point is a duty which quite properly does not belong to a skilled police officer at all but which ought to be filled by a school-crossing patrol?
Not only have we a situation in which the safety of schoolchildren is not being guaranteed because the police officers cannot guarantee attendance, but the fact is that the use of police officers in this capacity is not providing an effective economy measure. I support my constituents when they say at this stage that they want their lollipop patrols back. They want these familiar figures as a guarantee of road safety for their children. I recognise that it is the responsibility of parents to ensure that their children are properly trained. I also recognise that it can be argued that parents ought to be concerned to escort their children to and from school if they are young children. Nevertheless, as a community we have recognised for some time now that parents are not always in a position to carry out that supervision.
We have recognised widely the desirability of crossing patrols. In my view the reduction of these patrols is a particularly niggardly and mean-minded measure to effect the total of public expenditure restrictions and it does not achieve that objective. On these grounds I maintain that the whole situation involving the withdrawal of crossing patrols should be looked at again.
I emphasise that the way in which the measures have been carried out has paid no regard to safety priorities. At this crossing to which I have referred

the withdrawal of the patrol rested on the personal decision of the patrol lady who preferred to transfer to another crossing patrol which was more convenient for her. I defend her right to exercise her judgment in that respect. She is perfectly entitled to do so. What is reflected here is that there is no attempt at all on the part of the authorities to identify which crossing patrols, if any, could more safely be withdrawn. There has been no attempt to achieve priorities. What we have is a reduction in school crossing patrols simply on the basis of the decision by people manning the controls to discontinue their occupations.
I have appreciated this privilege of making a contribution to the last debate of this Session. When I realised that I was due to be called at this particularly auspicious hour I derived a degree of satisfaction in that I could, at least on this occasion, be guaranteed the last word. I regret to say, however, that on this occasion, in public as so often in private, I must yield the last word to my hon. Friend the lady Minister.

4.43 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Dr. Shirley Summerskill): I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, North (Mr. Davies) for setting out so clearly the problem which exists in respect of school-crossing patrols in London. He has illustrated the difficulties with a case from his own constituency and I am sure that there are other London Members, one of whom is in the House this afternoon, who could produce similar examples of crossings which have been without a regular attendant for some time.
With regard to the crossing which my hon. Friend has mentioned, I am sure that he is aware that it is the Commissioner's responsibility to decide how to deploy the staff at his disposal. It would not be proper for my right hon. Friend or myself to seek to intervene in this decision or other operational matters for which the Commissioner is responsible.
Under present arrangements the Commissioner deals with particular situations in particular areas. He is aware of the manpower and the womanpower available in each area. This availability varies from one area to another, and the work force


—the manpower and womanpower available—fluctuates in any area. These are clearly operational matters for which the Commissioner must have responsibility, but I know that he is familiar with the constituency case raised by my hon. Friend.
I should like to say something about the general principle involved. As has been said, the position with regard to the employment of school-crossing patrols in the country as a whole is that outside London this is a matter for local authorities but within the Metropolitan Police district the patrols are employed by the Commissioner. I would just point out that the Metropolitan Police are expected to comply with the financial and manpower restrictions which apply to local authorities outside London, and that in respect of school-crossing patrols the Government assumed that there would be no increase in spending in the financial year that has just ended. That is not to say that we imposed a rigid ban on the expansion of this service. But since the rate support grant negotiations for 1975–76 concluded with an understanding that overall spending by local authorities should not increase, it followed that one service could be increased only at the expense of reductions in others. It is for local authorities to decide for themselves where their priorities should lie.
The Metropolitan Police, unfortunately, have less room for manoeuvre. They do not operate anything like the range of services of a local authority, and it follows that they do not have the same scope for making compensatory cuts. Following the rate support grant settlement at the end of 1974, the Home Office told the Commissioner that we would expect him not to exceed for 1975–76 the number of school-crossing patrols which the Metropolitan Police employed on 30th September 1974—the mid-point of the preceding financial year, which was taken as a base. At it happened, recruitment had been good between that date and the date when the Commissioner was told of these restrictions, and as a result he had to allow the number of patrols in his employment to fall back to the earlier figure. This meant, of course, the immediate suspension of recruitment, so that posts were not filled as they fell vacant. That, unfortunately, is

what happened in my hon. Friend's constituency in the case which he described.
However, by the end of September last year, the number of staff in post for school-crossing duties was down to the required level, and since that date the Metropolitan Police have again been recruiting on a one-for-one basis as vacancies arise. I understand that they follow a policy of maintaining supervision by immediate replacement wherever possible, to maintain continuity, and that posts that have been unattended for a long time usually take a lower priority. This is because crossings where parents and children have become used not to having a patrol are likely to be less dangerous than one from which a patrol has just been removed.
I should, of course, make clear that the Commissioner has special arrangements for those crossings which are recognised to be exceptionally dangerous. The most dangerous of all are covered full-time by the police or traffic wardens, and there is a second category where a patrol is normally sufficient but where the police or traffic wardens provide cover if a patrol is not available. These arrangements are a matter for the Commissioner's judgment, but I hope that the House will accept that they seem to represent a sensible use of the limited resources at his disposal.
My hon. Friend has quite naturally questioned the wisdom of making comparatively small savings in public expenditure at the expense of the risk to children's lives. I naturally appreciate and share his concern, but I am afraid that there is no prospect of making additional funds available to enable the Commissioner to recruit patrols or other civilian staff up to establishment. It is inevitable that if the state of the economy demands that controls be placed on public expenditure there will be some reduction in services.
The House will know that everything possible has been done to protect the public themselves from restrictions of this kind. My hon. Friend will know of the welcome increase which is taking place in recruitment to the Metropolitan Police. No financial cuts have been made in that connection. That is why there has had to be some reduction in school-crossing patrols. Of course, the police


and traffic wardens do whatever they can to cover dangerous crossings where there is no civilian patrol, but they have only limited manpower and many other commitments.
I am sorry if I sound harsh—I do not means to be—but I am sure that my hon. Friend realises that once one exception is made it becomes doubly difficult to apply the restriction elsewhere, and in the end it loses all value and effect. The Metropolitan Police are doing what they can to fill new vacancies as they arise and to keep to a sensible order of priorities. I am sure that the Commissioner is right to try to maintain supervision where it exists and not just to fill posts ad hoc, so that no one can be sure from one week to the next whether

a particular crossing will be manned or not.
While I can offer no commitment to my hon. Friend, I know that the Com missioner has the needs of his constituents in mind and has this particular crossing in mind, as I said. Let us all hope that events will so improve as to enable us before too long to allow some further growth in essential social services, which at present, however hard it may be, the Government cannot afford to see expanding.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at seven minutes to Five o'clock till Monday 26th April, pursuant to the resolution of the House yesterday.